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SHADES OF LIGHT Based on text from the original book: Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988 Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery   Chapter 2   Footnotes return to Chapter 2  |  contents   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. Held by the Mitchell Library, ZDL DX15. See also small picture file, under Sydney Streets. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Ibid., p.328, n.45. 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. 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). See South Australian Register, 14 January 1846, and an earlier reference to Goodman's receipt of new processes in the Australian, 6 February 1843. For Goodman's Australian itinerary, see ME.A., pp.8, 170. 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. 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. Launceston Examiner, 28 February 1844. 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). Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1845, 25 February1845. 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. Port Phillip Patriot, 19 December 1845. 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. See South Australian Register, 26 August, 19 September 1845. 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. 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. South Australian Register, 22 and 29 April 1846. Perth Inquirer, 11 November 1846. 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. Held by R.J. Noye, Clare, South Australia. 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. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 April 1846. 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. Transcripts made by Keast Burke in 1953 from the diary in the Mortlock Library, State Library of South Australia, Adelaide. 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. 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'. 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. 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. In his own newspaper, the Spectator, 23 September 1846. 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. Entries of 18 and 25 August, and 15 December in G,T.Y.B. Boyes' diaries held by the University of Tasmania Archives, Hobart. Ibid., 22 October 1850. Ibid., 28 May 1853. 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. Quoted in entry on Newland in M.E.A. pp. 11- 12. 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. Reproduced in M.E.A., p.10, and held by the Macleay Museum, Sydney University. 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. See George Mackaness, The Correspondence of John Cotton, op. cit., part 111, (1847-49), letter of September 1848, p.27. Ibid, part 111, p.54, and part 11 (1844-47), pp.42-4. Ibid., part 111, letters of June and December, pp. 17-18, 31. Ibid., part 111, p.64. 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. 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. 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. 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. Sighted in a private collection by Alan Davies. 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. Held by the La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. 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   return to Chapter 2  |  contents