Based
on text from the original book: Shades of Light:
Photography and Australia 1839-1988
Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery
Chapter 2 Footnotes
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Captain
Lucas' ship, the French barque Justine, had arrived some
six weeks before from Valparaiso, Chile,
via the Bay of Islands, New Zealand (Sydney Gazette, 30
March 1841). The latter colony was founded in 1839, and
no record
of any
photography
there exists until the Governor, John Edward Eyre
(1815-1901), experimented with the daguerreotype in 1848.
(Information
from William Main's New Zealand Album Ims. awaiting publication.]
Lucas, who may have been French (the passenger list
in the Gazette
included a Mademoiselle Lucas), is not known to Dr
Keith McElroy of Tucson, Arizona, who has researched
early South
American photography
(personal communication with the author). The daguerreotype
was introduced to Brazil in December 1840, and to Peru
in 1842.
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Held
by the Mitchell Library, ZDL DX15. See also small
picture file, under Sydney Streets.
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Martens
used daguerreotypes as study aids for his paintings.
See his 'Lecture upon Landscape
in Painting' (1856), reprinted
in Bernard Smith, ed., Documents on Art and Taste
in Australia: The Colonial Period 1770-1914 (Melbourne:
Oxford University
Press, 1975), p. 120. His works otherwise show
no evidence of the use
of photography, the 'finish' of which, in his
view, was inimical
to the breadth of effect of real works of art.
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Hunt
was primarily a technician, his A Popular Treatise on
the
Art of Photography; including Daguerreotype andAll
the
New Methods ofProducing Pictures by the Chemical
Agency of Light;
(Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co., 1841) was
published in May. It was the first general treatise on
photography.
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In
addition to accounts in standard histories, for
a specialist study of the daguerreotype patent, see R.
Derek
Wood, 'The
Daguerreotype Patent, the British Government
and the Royal Society', History
of Photography 4, no.2 (January 1980): pp.53-9.
The patent covered a range of enterprises, including the
exhibition of daguerreotypes.
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See
Bernard V. Heathcote and Pauline F. Heathcote, 'Richard
Beard: An Ingenious and Enterprising
Patentee', History
of Photography 3, no.4 (October 1979): pp.313-29.
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Goodman
travelled in the Eden, which left London on 15 June.
See shipping arrivals listed in the Sydney
Morning
Herald,
5 November 1842.
-
Prices
in London were similar. See R. Derek Wood, 'The Daguerreotype
in England; Some
Primary Material
Relating
to Beard's Lawsuits',
History of Photography 3, no. 4 (October
1979): p.306.
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The
census of 1841 shows the population of New South Wales
as 35,507, of which 707 were listed
in the top
class of landed
gentry and professionals, while 798
belonged to the next group of shopkeepers and allied
mercantile
trades.
As
these figures
probably did not include women and
children or dependants, there were perhaps five thousand
potential clients
for portrait artists.
See Returns of the Colony 1841, New
South Wales
Government Archives 41273 (photocopy
held by the
National Library
of Australia, Canberra),
p.295.
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1However,
potrait and miniature painting was not a particularly
affluent or prestigious profession.
See
Eve Buscombe, Artists
in Early Australia and their Portraits
(Sydney: Eureka
Research, 1979),
pp. 9-10. The existence of a long-standing
demand for quick, cheap, middle-class portraits is
perhaps indicated
by the
case of transported
artist Samuel Clayton (1816-1853),
who used a brass profile drawing machine to make silhouette
portraits
'in a few
minutes for ten
shillings, each'. See Sydney Gazette,
4 November 1820.
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Dr
George F.J. Bergman, 'George Baron Goodman, First Professional
Photographer in Australia',
Australianjewish Historical Society
(May 1973): pp.302. Unsourced reference.
Antoine Claudet
was the only other photographer
known to have acquired a licence
from Miles
Berry (in March 1840), prior to
Beard's acquisition of the patent. Claudet set up a studio
in London
in 1841
and continued
to operate
as a rival to Beard.
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Figure
cited in Bernard V. and Pauline F. Heathcotel. 'op. cit.,
p.315. It is
not known how much Beard
paid for the exclusive
rights
to the patent. His original licence
fee from Miles Berry was negotiated at 150 pounds
per annum over
ten years.
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-
See
ch.1, 'The Artist in Society', in Tim Bonyhady's Images
in Opposition:
Australian Landscape Painting
1801-1890 (Melbourne:
Oxford University Press,
1985), which examines the economics of the art market
in the
1840s.
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Beard
sought fees as high as 1000 pounds. See Bernard. V. and
Pauline
F. Heathcote, op. cit.,
p.320. R.
Derek Wood,
'The
Daguerreotype in England;
Some Primary Material Relating to Beard's Lawsuits',
History of Photography
3, no.4 (October 1979);
pp.350-9, casts doubts
on Beard's figures. The lingering effects
of the depression
caused Goodman to lower
his price in 1845 (Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1845).
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See
South Australian Register, 14 January 1846, and an earlier
reference to Goodman's
receipt of
new processes
in
the Australian,
6 February 1843.
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For
Goodman's Australian itinerary, see ME.A., pp.8, 170.
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Unsourced
reference to a newspaper item c.29 September, in Dan
Sprod,
Victorian and Edwardian
Hobart from
Old Photographs (St
Ives, New South Wales:
John Ferguson, 1977),
n.p.
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Athenaeum,
17 July 184 1, held at the Allport Library,
Hobart,
with Bock's
notes
on photographic
processes.
I am indebted
to Chris Long's
Index to Photographers Working in Tasmania 1840-1940
(ms.
to be published
by the Australian National Gallery) and his Tasmania,
the First
Photographs 1840-60
(ms. held
by Chris
Long) for information
given in this chapter.
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Launceston
Examiner, 28 February 1844.
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Unsourced
reference in Margaret Mahood, The Loaded
Line (Melbourne: Melbourne
University
Press, 1973), p.31. Goodwin
taught himself
wood-engraving
in order to introduce illustrations to
the Cornwall
Chronicle (ibid., p.27).
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Sydney
Morning Herald, 2 January 1845, 25 February1845.
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Identified
by dated inscriptions on the portrait
of Mrs
Lawson held by the
Prospect
Trust and
one of
a larger group
of Lawson
family
portraits held by the Mitchell Library.
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Port
Phillip Patriot, 19 December
1845.
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From
a letter to his brother William in London
of
October 1845, reprinted
in
George Mackaness,
ed.,
The Correspondence
of
John Cotton,
part 11, 1844-46
(Sydney:
privately published,
1953), p.26.
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See
South Australian
Register, 26 August,
19
September 1845.
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See
South Australian
Register, 28 January,
28 February 1846. Dates for
nineteenth-century studios
are given in M.E.A. R.J.
Noye's Early South Australian
Photography (Saddleworth,
South Australia: privately
published, 1968) provides
some biographical details
on early
South Australian photographers.
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South
Australian Register,
28 January 1846.
Despite his
smaller plates,
business appears
to have been better for
Goodman than for Schohl.
In the same paper,
above Schohl's
advertisement, Goodman
advised Adelaide residents
that he
had only fifty cases left.
Sittings took ten seconds,
and the client
had his one guinea
portrait within five minutes.
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South
Australian Register,
22 and 29 April
1846.
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Perth
Inquirer, 11 November 1846.
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Copies
are held by Mortlock Library (miscollated in reverse order).
I am grateful to Ron Appleyard for assistance
with early press clippings and catalogues relating to
colonial photography in South Australia.
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Held
by R.J. Noye, Clare, South Australia.
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Sydney
Morning Herald, 2 June 1851, gives notice of Goodman's
death. His 'departures' from the colonies
were often deliberately misstated. Alan Davies, who has researched
Goodman
extensively, believes the obituary may have been a ruse
to
escape creditors.
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Sydney
Morning Herald, 22 April 1846.
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Letters
of 6 June 1845 and 18 April 1847 quoted in Rod Fisher,'Aspects
of Early Photography in the Moreton
Bay Region before 1860', Brisbane History Group Paper No.
3 (1985), pp. 136-7.
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Transcripts
made by Keast Burke in 1953 from the diary in the Mortlock
Library, State Library of South
Australia, Adelaide.
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See
Rod Fisher, op. cit., and his 'Through a Glass Darkly:
Photographers and their Role in the Moreton
Bay Region before 1860', Journal of the Royal Historical
Society of
Queensland 12, no.3, pp.297-316.
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Launceston
Examiner, 15 July 1843, quoted by Chris Long, Tasmania,
the First Photographs, op. cit. Udny
said 'This would be a source of fortune to a young man
wishing to see
the world; of great value to Botanists and travellers
and a delightful amusement'.
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Launceston
Examiner, 13 April 1844. This is too early for Talbot's
Sun Pictures of Scotland of 1844
or D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson's calotypes. John Hannavy's
A Moment
in
Time: Scottish Contributions to Photography 1840-1920
(Glasgow: The Third Eye Centre, 1983) gives information
on other
calotypists working in Edinburgh at this time.
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See
James Fenton, The Life and Work of the Reverend Charles
Price, First Independent Minister in Australia
(Melbourne: George Robertson and Co., 1886), p. 95.
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In
his own newspaper, the Spectator, 23 September 1846.
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Alfred
Bock reminiscences, 1919, ms. held by the Allport Library
and Museum of Fine Art. Bishop Francis
Nixon (1803-1879) himself took up photography in the 1850s.
See ch.6
p.48.
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Entries
of 18 and 25 August, and 15 December in G,T.Y.B. Boyes'
diaries held by the University of Tasmania
Archives, Hobart.
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Chris
Long in Tasmania, the First Photographs, op. cit., identifies
a number of possible Bock images and
compares the portraits of Henrietta and John Thompson (reproduced
in
Eve Buscombe, op. cit., p.285) with daguerreotypes of them
in the Queen
Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.
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Quoted
in entry on Newland in M.E.A. pp. 11- 12.
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Newland
worked in South America in 1847 (information from Dr Keith
McElroy Tucson). His Indian portraits - his
was the second studio in India - are held by the Mitchell Library.
See
Ray Desmond, 'Photography in India during the Ninetenth
Century',
India Office Library and Records Report for the Year
1974 (London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1976), p.6.
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Reproduced
in M.E.A., p.10, and held by the Macleay Museum, Sydney
University.
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Entry
on Cherry in Chris Long, Index to Photographers working
in Tasmania 1840-1940,, op. cit. Cherry's 1852
lithograph of his own daguerreotype view of the Norfolk Island
settlement
is held by the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts.
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See
George Mackaness, The Correspondence of John Cotton, op.
cit., part 111, (1847-49), letter of September
1848, p.27.
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Ibid,
part 111, p.54, and part 11 (1844-47), pp.42-4.
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Ibid.,
part 111, letters of June and December, pp. 17-18, 31.
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Illustrated
London News, 26 January 1850, p.53. Artists in Australia
also made use of these images. See
Jennie Boddington, 'Daguerreotype Portraits of Aborigines',
Photofile (Spring 1984): p.5, and Tony Brown and Hendrik
Koelenberg,
Skinner Prout in Australia 1840-1848 (Hobart: Tasmanian
Museum and Art
Gallery, 1986), plates xix and xx.
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Melbourne
Exhibition of 1854 Preparatory to the Paris Universal Exhibition
of 1855, cat. no. 312. Selwyn
did not arrive in Australia until 1852. The daguerreotypes
could have
been by William E. Kilburn for the British Ordnance Survey.
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Some
200 had been at work since 1841. Data drawn from a chronological
breakdown of the M.E.A. index
to professional photographers to 1900, and amateurs to 1880.
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They
were the surgeon, Dr John Thomson (w. 1850s-1870s), and
assistant surgeon, T.H. Huxley (1825-1895),
who learnt the process specifically to manage equipment
requested by
the commander of the expedition, Owen Stanley. There
is no evidence that any calotypes were made for scientific
purposes.
Thomson did take portraits in Sydney in 1850 and went on
to become president of the Scottish Photographic Society
in the
1870s. See Leonard Huxley, ed.,
Life and Letters of TH. Huxley, vol. I (London: Macmillan, 1900), pp.27,
356, 360- 1, and Julian Huxley, ed., TH. Huxley's Dia?y
of the Voyage of the H.M.S.
'Rattlesnake' (London: Chatto and Windus, 1935), pp.303, 305, pl. I.
Huxley, who became a famous scientist, had been recommended
for the position on
the expedition by Dr John Richardson.
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Sighted
in a private collection by Alan Davies.
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See
M.E.A., p.14. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery holds
seventeen views, in a group of twenty-six
which include views of Peru. These may have been taken by a
Calotype Club member
known to have visited Peru, or possibly by Dr Thomson
of the
'Rattlesnake' expedition. N.B. this was not John Thomson
(18 371921) photographer
and publisher of travel books in the 1880s.
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Held
by the La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.
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E.B.
Docker reminiscences, see M. E.A., p. 16. Gail Buckland's
First Photographs (New York: Macmillan,
1980), p.68, cites an 1857 photograph of a cricket match
by Roger Fenton
(1819-1869) as the earliest of this subject
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