Two couples, two dogs by A. Bock and T. Nevin

Middle-aged couple with dog
Hand-tinted carte-de-visite by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1870
Copyright © KLW NFC Imprint Private Collection 2013 ARR

Alfred BOCK [photographer]
Hobart Town, Australia 1835 – Wynyard, Tasmania 1920
Movements: 1867 Sale, Victoria 1882 Auckland, New Zealand 1887 Melbourne 1906 Wynyard, Tasmania
(Portrait of a couple with their dog) c.1866
sennotype image 18.4 h x 13.6 w cm
Purchased 1988
Accession No: NGA 88.1443

This sennotype (above) by Alfred Bock, titled "Married Couple with Dog" features the carpet which Thomas J. Nevin had acquired from Alfred Bock by 1867, along with their studio and glass house at the City Photographic Establishment, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart. The same carpet can be seen (below) in the solo portrait of Nevin's fiancee Elizabeth Rachel Day, taken ca. 1867 while operating as the firm Nevin & Smith, with partner Robert Smith until 1868. Nevin began an apprenticeship with Alfred Bock in early 1863 and succeeded to the business on Alfred Bock's sudden departure (due to insolvency) to Victoria in 1867.

Elizabeth Rachel Day, Thomas Nevin's fiancee (married 1871)
Taken by Thomas Nevin at Nevin & Smith (late Bock's) ca. 1865
140, Elizabeth Street Hobart Town
Full-length portrait, carte-de-visite
Copyright © KLW NFC 2009 ARR Private collection. Watermarked.

The "T. Nevin Late A. Bock" portrait of a middle-aged couple with a dog was hand-tinted by the family who purchased it or by subsequent owners. Such inept colouring was not the work of Nevin himself. His own family portraits show delicate and precise tinting. Other heavily tinted portraits bearing the same studio stamp used by Nevin for commercial portraiture into the early 1870s show the owners' preference for red and violet colours. This portrait of a couple with dog is unusual in that green and brown colours were used. In all these extant cartes-de-visite portraits bearing Nevin's stamp which were coloured subsequent to purchase, it is the carpet which has received the most savage treatment. The strange blobs defy conventional perspective, although the intention may have been the opposite. This carte - as with many of the others bearing amateurish daubs - probably originated from the same family in northern Tasmania.

Middle-aged couple with dog
Hand-tinted carte-de-visite by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1870
Copyright © KLW NFC Imprint Private Collection 2013 ARR

Page 63, cdv of two men with Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town handwritten on verso,
exhibited at the QVMAG, The Painted Portrait Photograph in Tasmania,
November 2007-March 2008.

Unidentified woman, seated with sewing
A highly colored carte-de-visite ca. 1872
Taken by T.Nevin late A.Bock, 140 Elizabeth St., Hobart Town
Held at the Archives Office of Tasmania TAHO Ref: PH31/439
Photo © KLW NFC Imprint 2012 ARR

RELATED ARTICLES main weblog

IN HIS OWN WORDS...

"T. J. NEVIN
PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST,
Returns his sincere thanks to his friends and the public for past favours, and having made a considerable Reduction in his Prices to suit the times, he solicits a continuance of their patronage, and invites attention to his circulars, showing particulars of the small cost for a first-class faithful Likeness.
140 ELIZABETH-STREET"
Hobart Mercury, 1st February 1873

“I hope that you have not got it in your mind that I am implicated with the ghost“.
Hobart Mercury, 4 December 1880

"Defendant said that he was the father of a large number of children, and did not know which one was referred to. (Laughter.)"
Hobart Mercury, 11 August 1886

"Mr. Thos Nevin was under the impression that the police should be under stricter supervision."
Hobart Mercury, 19 July 1888.

BIOGRAPHY: professional photographer Thomas James Nevin snr (1842-1923) produced large numbers of stereographs and cartes-de-visite within his commercial practice, and prisoner identification photographs on government contract. His career spanned nearly three decades, from the early 1860s to the late 1880s. He was one of the first photographers to work with the police in Australia, along with Charles Nettleton (Victoria) and Frazer Crawford (South Australia). His Tasmanian prisoner mugshots are among the earliest to survive in public collections, viz. the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the Tasmanian Heritage and Archives Office, Hobart; the Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasman Peninsula; the National Library of Australia, Canberra; and the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney. Thomas J. Nevin's stereographs and portraits are held in public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Switzerland.

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Important Notices

INDIGENOUS NOTICE:
lutruwita/Tasmania/Van Diemen's Land (loo-tru-wee-ta) always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

This weblog pays respect to the ancestors and elders past, present, and emerging of the first Australian peoples and acknowledges their continued connection to land, sea and culture as the traditional custodians of this country.

Irish-born Thomas J. Nevin would have been keenly aware that the residence and photographic studio he occupied at No's 138-140 Elizabeth St. Hobart in the 1870s were built on the traditional lands, nipaluna of the palawa people. It is no small irony that today, the very same property, which is renumbered as No. 198 Elizabeth St. Hobart and is occupied by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, has returned to its traditional owners.

Looking east from the corner of Patrick St., the Royal Standard Hotel, 142 Elizabeth St. then T. J. Nevin’s studio and residence, 140-138 Elizabeth St. Hobart, 1870s

We also acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the City of Sydney, and the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional custodians of the Kamberri/Canberra region on whose lands this site is maintained.

PLEASE NOTE: images on this weblog represent deceased people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Viewing such images may cause sadness and distress.

DISCLAIMER: We have not voluntarily contributed to any publication which supports the misattribution of T. J. Nevin's prisoner/convict photographs (300+ extant) to the non-photographer A. H. Boyd, nor do we condone any attempts by public institutions or private individuals to co-opt the work on these Thomas J. Nevin weblogs and associated sites to apply the misattribution.

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NINETEEN YEARS ago (before 2005 actually) we started blogging about Tasmanian photographer Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923). We look forward to another year or so as the project draws closer to completion. Contributions and donations are most welcome, and many thanks for your involvement.

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Anthony Trollope at Port Arthur

Thomas Nevin's VIP commission 1872

VISIT TO PORT ARTHUR.- Mr. Trollope and the Hon. Howard Spensly, Esq., Solicitor-General of Victoria, accompanied the Hon. the Premier, J.M. Wilson, Esq., and the Hon. the Attorney-General, W.R. Giblin, Esq., embarked in the Government schooner late last night, some time after Mr. Trollope had concluded his lecture on "Modern Fiction, as a recreation for young people," and left for Port Arthur. Their visit to the Peninsula will be a very hurried one, and will afford them only scant opportunity of inspecting the penal establishment, it being the intention of Messrs. Trollope and Spensly to leave Hobart Town for the North, en route for Victoria in a few days ...

Source: The Mercury 2 February 1872