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Cooee - Australia in the 19th Century

Who

In 1800, despite 12 years of convict transportation, Australia was still the country of its first inhabitants.

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Charles Rodius (1802–1860)
Bulkabra, chief of Botany, N.S. Wales c.1830
wash drawing; 27.8 x 25.0 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK282
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Colonial European artists formed an important portrait gallery of Indigenous Australians. Notable among these artists were William Westall (1781–1850), artist aboard Matthew Flinders’ Investigator, and Charles Rodius (1802–1860).

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Richard Read, senior (c.1765–1827?)
Portrait of Mary Howe c.1820
watercolour on ivory; 9.0 x 7.6 cm
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As the colony became more established, portraits recorded the growing numbers of merchants, clerics and bureaucrats required to administer it. The Reads, father and son (Richard senior, 1765–1827?, and Richard junior, 1796–1862), are typical of the artists of modest ability who were called upon to document this small community. Similar portraits to these ones in New South Wales were being painted in Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, round the same time.

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Thomas Glaister (fl.1854–1870)
Portraits of four children from the Cape family c.1858
four ambrotypes with col. dyes; oval images
6.5 x 4.5 cm
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From the time of the goldrushes, the progress of Australia paralleled the development of the new medium of photography. A watercolour portrait was inevitably a record of a person who had the time, money, and desire to be portrayed. An ambrotype—an early photographic process—required its own skills, but was quicker and seemed to capture a sitter in an instant. These small, delicate portraits of often unknown people, encased to prevent scratching, are among the most moving images of the 19th century.

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Unknown artist
Botanical curiosity, Claimantius rotundus Australiensis [between 1865 and 1874]
watercolour; 19.0 x 16.7 cm
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A small number of 19th-century portraits are humorous or satirical, such as this one of Arthur Orton. Orton, a butcher from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, sought through a long-running trial to prove that he was the heir to an English baronetcy. The case of the ‘Tichborne claimant’ aroused great public interest, and the ‘claimant’ was a popular subject for artists.

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Tesla Studios
Portrait of Quong Tart
albumen photograph; 13.9 x 9.9 cm
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The most widespread portraits of Victorian Australia were carte de visite photographs. Mounted on card, these were the way by which family and friends, often separated by great distances, were able to exchange images of each other. Cartes de visite also spread the fame of celebrities—such as bushrangers and victims of shipwrecks; or civic leaders like the Chinese merchant and restaurateur Quong Tart.