The
arrival of George Goodman (w.1842-1847) from London
on 5 November 1842 marks the real beginning of photography
in Australia(7). It was a well-planned
entrée, for Goodman
arrived fully equipped to open a portrait studio. His first
advertisement as 'the proprietor of the photographic apparatus',
appeared in the Australian of 9 December and on 13 December
the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Goodman's blue glass
studio had been erected on the roof of the Royal Hotel and
officially opened the day before.
The
sixty or so 'miniatures' made during the preparation of the
studio confirmed that 'the
accounts of the English newspapers have not been exaggerated,
the likenesses are indeed exact, and the sitter is only kept
in suspense about half a minute'.
The
cost of a portrait 6.3 by 5.5 centimetres was one guinea without
the case, although
this protection was essential
to the preservation of the fragile mirror
surface of the daguerreotype plate. Even so, the newspaper declared the total
cost still 'extremely moderate ... less than the cost of a new hat or a box
at the theatre'(8) revealing
that the clientele for daguerreotypes was to be drawn
from those same few thousand leading citizens who could afford painted likenesses(9). Only
a few portrait painters were at work in New South Wales and the average cost
of a portrait miniature was two to five guineas(10). The
new portraits were moderate by comparison.
Goodman
is said to have taken lessons from Daguerre in Paris and to
have obtained a licence from him(11). However,
it is certain that Goodman was in
fact one of
the first to obtain a colonial licence from Richard Beard who had completed
the purchase of the exclusive patent rights from Daguerre in July 1841.
Having already
made some 3,000 pounds before June, Beard's costs in acquiring the monopoly
of the daguerreotype trade in England, Wales and English colonies for 1,050
pounds
was quickly recouped(12).
Beard
granted licences to a number of provincial studios and opened
several studios in addition to his main
one at the Royal Polytechnic Institution - a popular
exhibition centre in London. On page one of The Times of 18
April 1842, Beard advertised licences for the British colonies(13). As Goodman
left England on 15 June
it is possible this advertisement was his inspiration to invest in an
Antipodean portrait studio.
Goodman
arrived at the beginning of one of Australia's worst economic
depressions, which was to severely reduce the income of even the most
successful local
painters. Conrad Martens for example turned to teaching, and the sale
of a lithograph
of Sydney at one guinea to supplement his yearly income, which dropped
from 300
pounds to 60 pounds in the 1840s(14). It is not known how much Goodman
paid for his licence but he must have invested at least several hundred
pounds
in his
new business(15).
Beard
supplied Goodman over the next few years with both equipment
and improved processes, and the latter advertised
his 'special advantage
of obtaining
from the patentee in England every recent improvement in the art'(16). Goodman
had also arrived with a 'reflecting apparatus', the Wolcott lensless
photographic apparatus
that used a concave mirror and 6.3 by 5.5 centimetre plates, specially
designed for portrait work. Beard also held the English patent rights
for this.
It
would seem that many of Goodman's clients were less than pleased
with their austere portraits; for after a year in Sydney he found
trade was
slowing down.
Goodman obtained a new apparatus and established himself in Tasmania,
the other major centre of the colonies, although it too was suffering
from
the depression.
He was in Hobart from August 1843 and in Launceston until February
1844(17). Goodman had barely established
his studio when the local artist Thomas
Bock advertised
in the Hobart Town Advertiser of 29 September 1843 that, 'in a
short
time he would be enabled to take photographic likenesses in the
first style
of the
art'. Goodman threatened legal action but he was saved the expense
as Bock promptly
withdrew(18). Despite his convict
background, Bock was a well-patronised portrait painter. At some
point he acquired an issue of the English
magazine, the
Athenaeum of July 1841, containing photographic formulae
and later used recipes from
Hunt's manual which suggests he may have taken an interest in photography
before 1843(19).
Goodman
evidently put his new, larger apparatus to work in Hobart taking
views — the
first made in Australia since the original 1841 view of Bridge
Street. The Hobart Town Courier of 26 January 1844 praised
a set of 'beautifully executed daguerreotype
views of our rising metropolis' which were compared to mezzotints
and found to represent the original with more felicity even than
in the case of portraits'.
These views would have cost about five guineas each, a considerable
sum then, but their subsequent fate is not known.
On
departing from Tasmania, Goodman sold some apparatus, probably
the defunct
Wolcott apparatus, to John Flavelle who was described
as having
been his
assistant for two years(20). Flavelle,
who set up in Launceston, did not last long and
may even have been the source for the amateur work of William
Goodwin (d.1862), editor of the Cornwall Chronicle,
who evidently experimented
with
the process
in 1844(21). A few primitive
looking daguerreotypes in Tasmanian collections are
possibly from the early 1840s.
Goodman
set up a new ground floor studio in Sydney and the next year
began regional tours. According
to a newspaper report,
some
one hundred
subscribers
were required
in advance before he made a Visit(22). It
was in Bathurst that the only positively identified Goodman
portraits were made
in May 1845.
These
were of the family
of William Lawson II, son of a pioneer explorer(23).
It
is fascinating to regard one of these first known portraits.
Mrs Caroline Lawson holds her second son Thomas proudly,
and of necessity
firmly,
during the long exposure. Her black shawl covers their
neck braces. Despite this
discomfort Mrs Lawson manages a Mona Lisa smile - it
is instantly recognisable as the stance of a proud mother,
she being one of the fortunate first generation
of mothers to have real images of their children.
The
expression on Thomas Lawson's face however is fixed and uncertain.
It
is the 'Is the picture taken, can I relax
yet?'
look. This
basic response to the
camera appears in the stiff gesture and glance of thousands
of later portrait photographs.
In
addition to his extensive tours of New South Wales, Goodman
made visits to the other
main settlements, Melbourne
in the
Port Phillip
district,
and Adelaide,
South Australia. Goodman was in Melbourne from early
August until mid-December 1845, when his income was
reported as
a staggering
870 pounds(24). With
some allowance for Sundays he accommodated some twenty
sitters a day, or made
a number of expensive
large daguerreotypes.
John
Cotton (1802-1849),
a pastoralist on the Goulburn River, commented on
Goodman's Melbourne work as 'generally well managed and more
forcible in light
and shade than those I saw done in England, owing
probably
to the stronger and clearer light here'(25). Cotton,
an amateur painter, took up daguerreotype work
himself in October 1846.
Goodman
appears to have been the first professional photographer in
Melbourne.
However in Adelaide as
in Hobart he had
some predecessors and competition.
Local optician William Little had briefly offered
a daguerreotype portrait
service
from 26 August 1845 and experimented with calotype
still-life studies and photograms(26).
In
December local dentist Mr Robert Norman and photographer,
German emigrant, C.A.F. Heseltine,
had also opened
a short-lived studio
before Heseltine
joined with another German photographer Edward
Schohl, who had arrived in Adelaide
in January 1846(27). By
February, Heseltine and Schohl had set up a studio
but despite
the claim of Schohl that he could provide 'larger
plates than any previously seen', their business
petered out(28).
A
mystery surrounds the importation of a daguerreotype
camera by local artist S.T. Gill (1818-1880)
whose intention to
start a portrait
service
was implied
by a report in the South Australian Register of
8 November 1845. It is possible that Gill had
a
supply
of sample
portraits, for
although the
apparatus was
said:
To
take likenesses as if by magic. The sitter is reflected in
a piece of looking glass,
and
suddenly,
without
aid of brush or pencil
his
reflection is 'stamped'
and crystallised'. It is the man himself
... We understand Mr
Gill will soon be prepared to show us as
we are.
Gill
seems not to have practised or to have considered taking the
camera on the Horrocks
Expedition
which he joined as
an unpaid artist in July
1846.
Gill's
camera may have been bought by Robert Hall (c.1821-1866),
a publican in Currie Street who had acted as an agent
for Edward Schohl on his arrival. Hall set up his studio
in April 'with the camera lately imported from Paris’(29)
and was proficient enough by November
1846 to take the first photographs in Western Australia on
a whirlwind
eight-day visit to Perth(30). Hall
exhibited daguerreotype portraits of Aboriginals in the Exhibition
of Pictures, the works of Colonial Artists organised by S.T.
Gill in Adelaide in 1847, and street scenes of Adelaide
in the sequel exhibition of 1848(31).
Hall
continued in business till 1866 and
made stereo daguerreotypes and ambrotypes,
as well
as paper
prints. Only a few poor
examples of his
output survive(32). Although
probably not Australian born, Hall
is one of the earliest residents
to
begin
and maintain a successful studio in
Australia. He was the first photographer to have
work included in a public
exhibition.
Hall had considerable
interest and expertise in natural history
and his advertisements contained some
quite long technical explanations.
He later styled himself 'Professor Hall',
although
he had no academic qualifications.
Hall had some competition from other daguerreotypists,
Kopsch
and
May, Norwood
Potter and a visiting
Englishman,
William Ogelsby
in 1849, but until the arrival of the
Duryea brothers in 1855
he was the leading
daguerreotypist in Adelaide.
Goodman(33), like
Daguerre, did not live to see the end of the daguerreotype
era but
the competition
he found
in Hobart
and
Adelaide may have
indicated the end
of the days of fabulous fortunes
from monopolies and exclusive licences.
He
had no real professional competition during his four and a
half years
in Australia. By
the time of
his departure
Goodman
was offering
gold-toned,
coloured,
cased
daguerreotypes with a choice of
backdrops painted from his own
daguerreotype views taken on his
tours for the same price as his
original monochrome, untoned and uncased 6.3
by 5.5 centimetre
plates of 1842(34). At
every stage his
income seems to have been staggering
in comparison
to that of any painter, though
he seems not
to have
used
this to
enter high
society or
local scientific
circles.
Only
a few positively identified portraits by Goodman exist and
a few possible
attributions distinguished
by their
small size
and primitive
appearance.
Thousands of other examples have
either been destroyed, have faded
or lie forgotten
in
drawers in Australia and England,
where so many
portraits were sent 'home'.
With
so few examples it is hard to say what sort of a craftsman
Goodman
was.
The fact
that even
those he
instructed
failed
to enjoy the same
success and
so few of those who tried to
start studios succeeded, at
least indicates
his business
and social acumen. Several
accounts of his sitters survive and most
of these
are disgruntled.
Charles
and William
Archer, early
settlers
in
the Moreton
Bay district (later Queensland),
had their portraits taken in
Sydney in
1843. William
described his, when dispatching
it to his family in Norway,
as:
A
most hideous, sulky, sepulchral daub, which you must attribute
to the fact
that it was
taken when
the art
was yet in its
infancy in the
colony,
and
from my extreme aversion
to
spend an additional twenty-six
shillings
for
the chance
of a second failure. Charlie's
on the contrary is considered
a good
likeness.
Still
later in 1847, he observed that:
The
violent effort the sitter makes to look amiable even
for so short
a time,
gives that
sort of
desperate determination
to the
expression
which
is almost
always seen in Daguerreotypes
. . . (35)
Miss
Mary Thomas in Adelaide described her family's
visits to Robert Hall
on two occasions
in April
1846: 'he did
not succeed
very well,
so that
the plates
will most likely be
rubbed clean again as the others
were'.
Earlier,
on 16 February her mother, Mrs Mary
Thomas, had visited
Goodman's studio
and
on 30 January
the diary records:
I
was very much pleased a few days ago by
seeing some
portraits
beautifully
thrown off in Daguerreotype
[by
Schohl]. These
were the second
number of specimens of
the Daguerreotype
likenesses that
have been
shown to me(36).
Shortly
after his return from Adelaide,
Goodman's
work was
declared equal
to that of the
English daguerreotypists,
examples of which
would have
arrived with
new emigrants
from late 1842
onwards.
In a long
tribute to
his new
larger plates,
scenic backgrounds,
full figures
and clearer images,
which did
not have
to be tilted
to be seen, the
Sydney Morning
Herald of
4 April
1846 recalled
his
early
work as 'a nine
days wonder'
which soon
'died a natural
death'.
Examples
of Goodman's
views or even
his new improved
style of
1846-1847
have
not been
found. The
few extant examples
of his
daguerreotypes
which have
survived confirm
that photography
in Australia
was from the
beginning an
art of vigour
and pictorial
power.
It was also,
it seems, a
very remunerative
art, for
Goodman possibly
made
some
ten to twenty
thousand
daguerreotypes
during his
four and
a half years
in Australia.
His
income must
have equalled
that of
many businessmen
and certainly
more than
any
artist. This
is a twentieth
century
assessment,
but the lesson
would also
have been
apparent to Goodman's
contemporaries.
His departure
was followed
by a
new league
of
photographers.
In
1847 when Goodman retired,
Sydney,
Hobart,
Launceston, Melbourne
and Adelaide
had
resident
photographers
and Launceston
and Perth,
as well
as regional
towns in
New South
Wales,
had been visited
by at
least one
photographer.
Some dozen
amateur
and professional
photographers
had been
at work
in Australia
since 1841.
In the
next few years,
resident
photographers
were
established
in
each of
the remaining
centres.
Only the
Moreton
Bay district
(Queensland)
in
the north
did not
see photographers
until the
I850s(37).