T. Nevin cdv at the "Who Are You" exhibition, NGV and NPG 2022

Photographs by T. J. NEVIN 1860s-70s
WHO ARE YOU Exhibition NGV & NPG 2022
Wesley ENOCH contributor of cdv by T. NEVIN



Photographic works extant in public collections taken by Thomas J. Nevin  (1842-1923) in Tasmania during the 1860s and 1870s are regularly displayed at exhibitions held by Australian national galleries and museums. In many cases, a publication in book form accompanies the exhibition. For example, for their 2015 exhibition of The Photograph and Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney chose a stereograph taken by Thomas J. of Nevin of his studio in Elizabeth St. Hobart ca. 1868, one of at least a hundred rare stereographs and portraits by Nevin housed at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.



Stereograph by Thomas J Nevin bottom of page 270
Catalogue for the exhibition The Photograph and Australia, Judith Annear (ed)
Art Gallery of NSW, 21 March - 8 June 2015.
Photo copyright © KLW NFC 2015 ARR



The accompanying publication to the exhibition, The Photograph and Australia, listed the stereograph on page 296 with these details:

Thomas J Nevin
Elizabeth St 1860s
stereograph
7.3 x 7 cm (each)
8.5 x 17.4 cm (card)
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart
Q1994.56.12

"Who Are You" 2022
This year's exhibition titled WHO ARE YOU includes a hand-tinted carte-de-visite of a woman yet to be identified, taken by Hobart professional photographer Thomas J. Nevin in the 1860s. The exhibition of 230 works - 79 from the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, and 160 from the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne - represent photography, painting, sculpture, works on papers and video.

The curatorial rationale of the exhibition:

WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture is the first exhibition to comprehensively bring together the rich portrait holdings of both the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Revealing the artistic synergies and contrasts between the two institutions’ collections, this co-curated exhibition considers portraiture in Australia across time and media....

WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture questions what constitutes a portrait - historically, today and into the future. The connection between the artist, sitter, and viewer is considered throughout the exhibition, creating opportunities for new perspectives to emerge from this relationship. The curators have organised the works into five key themes, each one occupying a separate area of the exhibition space.

Person and Place examines the connection between identity and the land on which we live.
Meet the Artists celebrates self-portraits and portraits that artists have made of fellow artists.
Intimacy and Alienation reflects on love, family, friendship, isolation, mourning and nudity.
Inner Worlds considers how identity can be perceived through psychology, imagination, surrealism and fetish.
Icons honours the sitter portrayed in each portrait, emphasising who is remembered and who has been forgotten.

Screenshots: Virtual Tour of Who Are You: Australian Portraiture
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/virtual-tours/who-are-you/
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne from 25 March 22 to 21 August 2022
National Portrait Gallery, Canberra from 1 October 2022 to 29 January 2023
Visit: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/who-are-you/


The Book of the Exhibition

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication produced by the NGV and features written reflections by some of Australia’s foremost writers, thinkers, artists and poets. Each author was invited to choose an artwork in the exhibition that resonated with their lived experience. This publication centres portraiture within contemporary conversations around identity, belonging and representation in Australia.

Source: NGV Fact Sheet 1: WHO ARE YOU

WHO ARE YOU
Edited by Sophie Gerhard, Joanna Gilmour, Penelope Grist, David Hurlston, Hannah Presley and Beckett Rozentals, with contributors
NGV | National Portrait Gallery | Thames & Hudson

Who Are You: Australian Portraiture,NGV 2022
Introduction, p. xiii

Tony Ellwood AM
Director, National Gallery of Victoria

Karen Quinlan AM
Director, National Portrait Gallery

EXTRACT, Introduction

... With works spanning disciplines and chronologies, WHO ARE YOU challenges conventional assumptions around portraiture. The project celebrates the art form, revealing themes of inner worlds, intimate selves, identity, isolation, politics, celebrity and the social sphere. WHO ARE YOU features more that 200 works by renowned Australian artists, including Patricia Piccinini, Anton Ahem, Nora Heysen, Howard Arkely, Vincent Namatijira and Tracey Moffatt, and sitters including Cate Blanchett, Helena Rubenstein, Eddie Mabo, and Marcia Langton....

Carte-de-visite by T. Nevin



Who Are You: Australian Portraiture, pps 164-165
A selection of photographs by contributor Wesley Enoch.
Caption:

(left to right) T. Nevin, Hobart No Title (woman wearing a bonnet with a pink bow), carte-de-visite 1865-67 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
John Bishop-Osborne No title (Child standing on a chair and holding a whip), carte-de-visite 1879-83 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Burman & Co., Melbourne No title (Man) , carte-de-visite 1876-77 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
James E. Bray Madame Sibly, Phrenologists and mesmerist ca. 1870 National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Who Are You: Australian Portraiture p.270

T. Nevin, Hobart Australia 1865-67
No Title (woman wearing a bonnet with a pink bow), carte-de-visite (1865-67)
albumen silver photograph,
watercolour
9.5 x 5.8 cm (image and support)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the NGV Foundation
by John McPhee, Member 2003
(2003.395)

Contributor Wesley Enoch



Who Are You: Australian Portraiture p.275

WESLEY ENOCH AM is a writer and director. He hails from Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah) and is a proud Quandamooka man. Enoch was artistic directror of Sydney Festival from 2017 to 2020, and was previously artistic director at IIbijerri Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Cooperative and associate artistic director at Belvoir Street Theatre. He was creative consusltant, segment director and indigenous consultant for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Enoch has written and directed numerous Indigenous theatre productions; his most recent is the Australian premiere of Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at the Sydney Theatre Company.

Who Are You: Australian Portraiture p.161

Contributor to the exhibition and publication, Wesley Enoch prefaced his choice of items from the NGV and NPG collections with this statement in which he raises the question significant to memorialising the deceased. The carte-de-visite by T. Nevin was one of a dozen included in his selection.

EXTRACT: Wesley Enoch's Preface, p. 161

Portrtaits are an act of love and care, of memory and storytelling, of finding a physical form to display the invisible and, most of all, a demonstration of belonging ...
... A long-ago tradition dictates that the death of a family member heralds the cessation of speaking their name and the burning or abandonment of their few treasured belongings. This tradition has slowly evolved into new cultural practices that respond to technological advances like photography (though we are slower to respond to video and social media - what do we do with Facebook pages of the deceased? The birthday reminders? Their online collection of pics, vids and comments?) ....

T. Nevin's cdv of Woman with Pink Bow
Apposite, perhaps, that the question posed by the exhibition's title "Who Are You?" applies to this unidentified woman who wore a houndstooth check dress and floral bonnet with large ribbons when she was photographed in the Hobart studio of Thomas J. Nevin. The drape, table, chair, carpet and pose featured in this cdv are identical to the decor and pose in a cdv of a younger woman he photographed around the same time, held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart. This item, however, unlike the cdv of the younger woman, was delicately hand-tinted. The original presenter of this cdv to the NGV in 2003, John McPhee, who curated the exhibition of Nevin's 1870s photographs of Tasmanian prisoners (mugshots of "convicts") at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston in 1977, has dated this portrait to the mid 1860s.





National Gallery of Victoria Catalogue Notes
No title (woman wearing a bonnet with a pink bow), carte-de-visite
T. NEVIN, Hobart (1865-1867)
Medium albumen silver photograph, watercolour
Measurements 9.5 × 5.8 cm (image and support)
Place/s of Execution Hobart, Tasmania
Inscription printed in ink on support on reverse c. AD ALTIORA / CITY PHOTOGRAPHIC ESTABLISHMENT / T. NEVIN. / LATE / A. BOCK. / 140 ELIZABETH ST / HOBART TOWN. / Further copies / can be obtained at / any time.
Accession Number 2003.395
Department Australian Photography Credit Line National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the NGV Foundation by John McPhee, Member, 2003

RELATED POSTS main weblog

• Woman with pink ribbons by Thomas Nevin 1870s
• Nevin's photographs at the Art Gallery NSW exhibition 2015
• Sideshow Alley: Thomas Nevin at the NPG exhibition 2015
• Convict photographs by T. J. Nevin at the Art Gallery NSW Centenary Exhibition 1976
• Lost and found: one day in 1866 and the scientific racism which followed
• Thomas Nevin's stereographs from the Pedder collection
• Exhibition 2019: T. J. NEVIN's mugshot of prisoner James BLANCHFIELD 1875
• Thomas Nevin's women clients and their dresses 1870s
• NLA's 'Intersections' with convict carte by Nevin

Convict photographs by T. J. Nevin at the Art Gallery NSW Centenary Exhibition 1976

AGNSW 1976 Centenary Exhibition
T. J. NEVIN 1870s photographs of Tasmanian prisoners
G. T. STILWELL State Library of Tasmania





Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
Photos copyright © KLW NFC 2013

Photographs of Tasmanian "convicts" - i.e. prisoner mugshots - taken by T. J. Nevin in the 1870s were exhibited at the Centenary of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in 1976. The Exhibition Catalogue was written by Daniel Thomas,  Senior Curator and Curator of Australian Art, Art Gallery of NSW. The Tasmanian contributor was antiquarian Geoffrey Stilwell, a Trustee of the Centenary Celebrations of the Art Gallery of NSW and Special Collections curator of the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania.



Ian North, artist, Archibald finalist 2005
Title: Daniel Thomas at home, Northern Tasmania
Art Gallery NSW: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/2005/28102/

Daniel Thomas AM, Emeritus Director Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, retired in 1990 and now lives in Tasmania. From 1958 he was the curator in charge of Australian art, and later chief curator, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. From 1978 to 1984 he was the inaugural head of Australian art at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

From: ART MUSEUMS IN AUSTRALIA: A PERSONAL RETROSPECT by Daniel Thomas 2011

The Centenary Exhibition Catalogue 1976
These photos were taken at the National Library of Australia, 8th June 2017. The Exhibition Catalogue Australian art in the 1870's / by Daniel Thomas - N 709.94 T455  is available through Trove.  Photos copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2017



Cover: Australian Art in the 1870s



Title page: "Australian art in the 1870s by Daniel Thomas. An exhibition to mark the centenary of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney: 25 June-2 August 1976; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne: 28 October-21 November 1976"



Page 27: list of three photography exhibits by T. J. Nevin Nos. 116-118

TRANSCRIPT

T. J. Nevin active 1870s
Tasmanian convicts (1874)
116. William Turner, Transported Lord Goderich (Boy's ship), 1811-1841.
117. Nathan Hunt, Transported Elphinstone (Boys), 28.7.1842, Larceny
118. Thomas Harrison, Idle and disorderly.
Three photographs, carte-de-visite size 10.5 x 6.5 cm, 4½ x 2½ in, each inscribed (on back) as above, and printed T. J. Nevin, 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town. From a set of over 40 convict portraits made in 1874.
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania

Page 41: Entry for T. J. NEVIN,



Paragraph on T. J. Nevin and his photographs of "still-living transported convicts", p. 41 of the Exhibition Catalogue for Australian art in the 1870s : an exhibition to mark the centenary of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney by Daniel Thomas 1976.

TRANSCRIPT

T. J. NEVIN
A Hobart photographer who in 1874 made a set of over 40 photographs of still-living transported convicts. They are included as an example of the strong interest in Australian history which is characteristic of the 1870s. These small photographs are also examples of the standard "Carte-de-visite" size used for almost all portraits in the 1850s and 1860s, but going out of favour after 1870 for the larger "Cabinet" size , 4½ x 6½ inches. After 1875 "Panels". 8½ x 6½  inches also became common for family groups. Carte-de-visite and Cabinets of royalty, actresses, bishops, convicts and other celebrities were widely available and were collected in albums as well as portraits of one's own family.

The Mugshots
Working on government contract and as full-time civil servant, Thomas J. Nevin photographed many hundreds of Tasmanian prisoners - or "convicts" as they are termed in art history and heritage tourism discourse - between 1872 and 1886, and not just the set of forty (40) indicated in this brief Exhibition Catalogue note dated 1976. The author(s) were referring to the set of 40 prints from Nevin's glass negatives of prisoners arranged in three panels held at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston. See this article - Thomas J. Nevin's glass plates of prisoners 1870s.







Forty prints of 1870s Tasmania prisoners in three panels
Original prints of negatives by T. J. Nevin 1870s
Reprints by J. W. Beattie ca. 1915
QVMAG Collection: Ref : 1983_p_0163-0176

The originals of these forty (40) individual prints of Tasmanian prisoners, photographed at the Hobart Gaol by the commissioned photographer Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s, were intended to be pasted to the criminal record sheet of each prisoner. It was customary to photograph a person before conviction and after it, and again on discharge, by order of the Tasmanian Attorney-General from 1872 onwards, and since the men whom Nevin photographed were repeat and habitual offenders, the same glass negative was used again and again. The plates were handled repeatedly to produce duplicates for distribution to regional prisons and police stations, and for the many administrative copies required by the central Municipal Police Office at the Town Hall, the Supreme Court and the Hobart Gaol.

The forty individuals whose police photographs from the 1870s were lined up in this manner and pasted to dark green cardboard were all chosen by convictaria collector John Watt Beattie in 1915 because they were repeat offenders convicted of serious crimes who had been arraigned in Supreme Court sessions in the 1870s and incarcerated at the Hobart Gaol, Campbell St. Beattie chose them because he wanted to sell their images to tourists at his convictaria museum located in Murray St. Hobart, and to include them in intercolonial exhibitions associated with the fake convict ship the Success. He falsely touted these men as representative of the pre-1853 convict transportation era, hence the labelling on each of these panels, “Types of Imperial Convicts” and "Photographed at Port Arthur", when the reality was far less fascinating. By the 1870s, these men were common criminals and “prisoners”, not "convicts" and they were photographed on sentencing at the Supreme Court Hobart and Hobart Gaol, a judicial process funded and administered by the Colonial government, not the British government.

Although the Exhibition Catalogue assumes it was Thomas Nevin in the 1874 who "made a set of over 40 photographs of still-living transported convicts", it was Beattie & Searle who collated the original prints which they removed from the prisoner rap sheets  in the early 1900s and created these panels from Nevin's original first-captures on glass negatives of the 1870s. None of the forty prisoners featured in each of these three panels, however, was exhibited. Just three photographs from the QVMAG collections were selected for the Centenary Exhibition of the Art Gallery of NSW in 1976.

These three black and white copies (below) were made at the QVMAG in 1985 from Nevin's original sepia prints, and placed online in the early 2000s. The original 1870s prints of these black and white copies were exhibited at the AGNSW in 1976 (listed on page 27 in the Exhibition Catalogue). The curator chose these three photographs possibly because the full frontal pose and the frank stare captured more of the prisoner's "personality" than the conventional pose where the sitter's sightlines were deflected either left or right, the pose typical of Nevin's commercial studio practice and evident in the more than 200 (two hundred) prisoner cdvs held in the Beattie collection at the QVMAG. Not that the frontal frontal pose was uncommon in Nevin's practice: these two cartes-visite of young women, for example, are equally compelling for their full frontal stare at the camera and photographer.






On left and verso below left: 
Plain oval mount, head and shoulders to below waist cdv: A teenage girl [unidentified] with ringlets, wearing a dark dress with wide stripes banded in white and white cuffs, holding a hand coloured posy of flowers tinted yellow. Her gaze is direct to camera. The verso of this cdv bears Nevin's most common commercial studio stamp "T. Nevin late A. Bock" etc and dates to ca. 1871-1874. Courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010. All rights reserved.

On right and verso below right: 
Head and shoulders cdv on plain oval mount : A young woman [unidentified] with a chin dimple, wearing an elaborately frilled bodice, brooch on a ribbon wound round her neck and chain to the waist, hair curled in layers across the top of head, her stare dramatic, solemn and strongly directed at the photographer/camera. Studio portrait by Thomas J. Nevin ca, 1870-1875. Verso with the handwritten inscription in Samuel Clifford's orthography: "Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town". The original was taken by Thomas Nevin before 1876, and reprinted by Samuel Clifford until 1878, per his advertisement in The Mercury, 17th January 1876:

Mr T. J. Nevin's friends may depend that I will endeavour to satisfy them with any prints they may require from his negatives.
S. CLIFFORD

Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
TMAG Ref: Q1984.294

In addition, the three prints of prisoners exhibited at the Centenary of the AGNSW in 1976 were possibly chosen because they had escaped the rebranding on the versos with the inscription "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" for Beattie's tourism trade of the 1900s and for the 1938 QVMAG exhibition which commemorated his death and bequest to the people of Launceston. A year after the 1976 AGNSW Centenary Exhibition, in 1977, many more of these "convict portraits" by T. J. Nevin from the Beattie collection were exhibited at the QVMAG, curated by John McPhee.

Prisoner William TURNER



Prisoner William TURNER
QVMAG Ref: QVM 1985: P: 90 or 1985_p_0090
Catalogue No. 116. William Turner, Transported Lord Goderich (Boy's ship), 18/11/1841.



Verso: Prisoner William TURNER
QVMAG Ref: QVM 1985: P: 90 or 1985_p_0090
Catalogue No. 116. William Turner, Transported Lord Goderich (Boy's ship), (18/11/1841).

See more here of this collection held at the QVMAG
Read more about prisoner William Turner in this post here

Prisoner Nathan HUNT



Prisoner Nathan HUNT
QVMAG Ref: QVM 1985_p_0073
Catalogue No. 117. Nathan Hunt, Transported Elphinstone (Boys), 28.7.1842, Larceny 9-1-79



Verso: Prisoner Nathan HUNT
QVMAG Ref: QVM 1985_p_0073
Catalogue No. 117. Nathan Hunt, Transported Elphinstone (Boys), 28.7.1842, Larceny 9 -1-79

Read more about this prisoner Nathan Hunt here in this article.

Prisoner Thomas HARRISON



Prisoner Thomas Harrison
QVMAG:1985_P_0113
Catalogue No. 118. Thomas Harrison, Idle and disorderly. P.O. Sorell 3 months Jany 1875



Verso: Prisoner Thomas Harrison
QVMAG:1985_P_0113
Catalogue No. 118. Thomas Harrison, Idle and disorderly. P.O. Sorell Jany 1875

Read more about prisoner Thomas Harrison here in this article

Collector and Trustee G. T. Stilwell



G.T. Stilwell (1931-2000)
Special Collections librarian and Allport Museum curator
State Library of Tasmania
Mercury photo 1990 (?)

The National Library of Australia's online catalogue notes for Daniel Thomas' AGNSW Centenary Exhibition Catalogue do not include the names of the individual artists whose works were shown in 1976. The State Library of Tasmania, however, lists T. J. Nevin's name along with other Tasmanian artists in their catalogue notes for the publication Australian art in the 1870s - available via  Linc. The State Library of Tasmania's online entry also mentions which items came from G. T. Stilwell's private collection, viz:

Title: Australian art in the 1870s : an exhibition to mark the centenary of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney / by Daniel Thomas.
Author/Creator: Thomas, Daniel, 1931- author.
Publication: Sydney : Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, [1976]
Physical description: 60 pages : illustrations ; 19 x 18cm.
Provenance: From the collection of Geoffrey Thomas Stilwell. Item IDs 146035183 & 146035233
Notes: "Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney: 25 June-2 August 1976; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne: 28 October-21 November 1976" --Title page.
Contains 12 illustrations out of the 143 listed in the exhibition catalogue.
Includes bibliography, index and short artist biographies.
Partial contents: Includes Tasmanian artists or works on Tasmania: Robert Beauchamp -- Robert Dowling -- J. Haughton Forrest -- Henry Grant Lloyd -- Louisa Meredith -- T. J. Nevin -- W. C. Piguenit -- John Skinner Prout -- James Scurry -- Eugen von Guérard -- Frederick Woodhouse.
ISBN: 0724010564 (paperback)
Subjects:
Art, Australian -- Exhibitions.
Art, Modern -- 18th century -- Exhibitions
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Exhibitions.
Art, Australian -- 18th century -- Exhibitions
Art, Australian -- 19th century -- Exhibitions.
Artists -- Australia -- Exhibitions.
Artists -- Tasmania -- Exhibitions.
Tasmania -- Pictorial works.
Exhibition catalogs -- Tasmania.
Exhibition catalogs.
Other Authors/Creators: Stilwell, Geoffrey Thomas, 1931-2000, former owner.
Contains : Dowling, Robert Hawker, 1827-1886. Unequally yoked.
Contains : Piguenit, W. C. (William Charles), 1836-1914. Mount Wellington from New Town Bay.
National Gallery of Victoria.
Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Record ID: SD_ILS:1216315

 Researchers are indebted to the late G.T. Stilwell for his creation of the Stilwell Index during his service at the State Library of Tasmania. G.T. Stilwell also published a short biography of Thomas Nevin with J. S. Kerr outlining the Town Hall dismissal and the misattribution by Chris Long of Nevin's convict portraiture to A.H. Boyd in The Dictionary of Australian Artists: painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870, edited by Joan Kerr. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press 1992).



Photo copyright © KLW NFC 2010

Entry for Thomas J. Nevin, pp 568-9
The Dictionary of Australian artists : painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870, edited by Joan Kerr.
Publisher: Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1992.
Description: xxii, 889 p. : ill., facsims., ports. ; 27 cm.

Joan Kerr and Geoffrey Stilwell's entry on page 568 of The Dictionary of Australian Artists: painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870 dismisses the claim made by Chris Long in the mid 1980s, published in 1995, that A.H. Boyd was the photographer of the cdvs known as the Port Arthur convict cartes, 1874, or that he was a photographer at all. They state:

Some of the seventy cartes-de-visite identification photographs of Port Arthur convicts taken in the 1870s (QVMAG) at about the time the settlement was closed (1876) have been attributed to Nevin because they carry his studio stamp. He possibly held the government contract for this sort of criminal recording work, although Long believes that he was merely a printer or copyist and suggests that the most probable photographer was the commandant A.H. Boyd. However, professional photographers were employed to take identification photographs in Australian prisons from the beginning of the 1870s (see Charles Nettleton) and while a collection of standard portrait photographs and hand-coloured cartes-de-visite undoubtedly by Nevin is in the Archives Office of Tasmania no photographs by Boyd are known.
Information: J.S. Kerr, G.T. Stilwell

Read more in these posts:

• G.T. Stilwell's letter to Mrs Shelverton 1977
• Tasmanian Newspapers: The Mercury & STILWELL Index
• Professor Joan Kerr 1992-4

The G. T. Stilwell Private Collection Auction 2015
This oil on canvas of a native bird with mountain berries and native flora with  Mount Wellington in the background was painted by Florence Williams ca. 1873. It was estimated to sell for $6,000 - $10,000. The price realized, including buyer's premium, was $93,000.

Description: Florence Williams. (British / Australia 1833 – 1915)
A native bird with mountain berries and native flora, backed by Mount Wellington oil on canvas
Signed with initials FW
Original gilt frame, the image 59.8 x 45.2cm.
Florence Williams was born in the UK and exhibited at the Royal Academy. Williams moved to Australia in 1863 and lived in New Town, Tasmania from 1873 – 1875, during which this work would have been painted.
Provenance: W.N. Hurst Hobart,
The Sale of Michael Sharland. 1987. Michael Sharland (Tasmanian. 1899 – 1987) wrote as “Peregrine” for the Sydney Morning Herald and Hobart Mercury. Sharland was a passionate environmentalist for the built and natural environment, author and ornithologist. He was the author of nine volumes concerning Tasmanian bird and wildlife, as well as the definitive “A Guide to the Birds of Tasmania” and the architectural classic “Stones of a Century”. He was Superintendent of Scenic Reserves from 1947 and The Scenery Preservation Board (later formed as Parks and Wildlife Service).

Lot closed - Price Realized incl. BP:$93,000
ESTIMATE:  $6,000 - $10,000

Auction notes sources;

• Moss Green Auctions:  http://www.mossgreen.com.au/m/lot-details/index/catalog/177/lot/74181/Florence-Williams-British-Australia-1833-ndash-1915
• ABC News: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-13/tasmanian-art-curators-private-collection-open-for-viewing/6939272

RELATED POSTS main weblog

• Sideshow Alley: Thomas J. Nevin at the NPG exhibition 2015
• Poster Boys 1991 of 1870s convicts
• Professor Joan Kerr 1992-94
• John McPhee on Nevin in 1977 and 2007 at the QVMAG
• Convict cartes by Thomas Nevin at the new National Portrait Gallery
• "In a New Light": NLA exhibition with Boyd misattribution
• The Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery Convicts 1977
• G. T. Stilwell’s letter to Mrs Shelverton
• Heads of the People NPG 2000
• Mirror with a Memory National Portrait Gallery 2000
• Two histories, two inscriptions (TMAG 1995)
• ‘The Australian People’, J. Jupp (ed) 2001
• Anne-Marie Willis & Richard Neville on the A.H. Boyd misattribution
• The QVMAG, Chris Long and the A.H. Boyd misattribution
• Helen Ennis’ NLA publication ‘Intersections’ 2004
• Isobel Crombie and Helen Ennis: how misattribution can persist
• Site Map No. 2: Professional Work (T. J. Nevin)

Nevin's photographs at the Art Gallery NSW exhibition 2015

STEREOGRAPH of STUDIO etc ELIZABETH St.
MUGSHOT of PRISONER WILLIAM RUSSELL



Stereograph by Thomas J Nevin bottom of page 270
Catalogue for the exhibition The Photograph and Australia, Judith Annear (ed)
Art Gallery of NSW, 21 March - 8 June 2015.
Photo copyright © KLW NFC 2015 ARR

The Stereograph
Of the many dozens of stereographs taken by Thomas J. Nevin in the late 1860s which are held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collections, this particular one was chosen for display at The Photograph and Australia exhibition, Art Gallery of NSW, 21 March - 8 June 2015.

The Exhibition catalogue on page 296 lists the stereograph with these details:

"Thomas J Nevin
Elizabeth St 1860s
stereograph
7.3 x 7 cm (each)
8.5 x 17.4 cm (card)
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart
Q1994.56.12"

The old TMAG database (online until 2006) listed this stereograph with these details:

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Ref: Q1994.56.12
Sepia stereoscope salt paper print
T . Nevin [Artist] 1860s late
Hobart from near 140 Elizabeth Street on corner Patrick ? Street.
Nevin & Smith photographic Studio in buildings on extreme right [refer also to Q1994.56.33]
Impress on front: T Nevin/ photo

The reference to another stereograph of a similar view in the old TMAG database entry (above) is to this one, Q1994.56.33, (below) which depicts the same line of buildings, including Thomas Nevin's studio located at 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart, just "three doors from Patrick Street" according to press advertisements by the studio's former operator until 1867, Alfred Bock. The studio at No. 140 with the business name of The City Photographic Establishment and the shop and residence were separated by an entrance leading to the glasshouse at No. 138½, visible in both captures this side of the pavement overhang as the street begins its descent to the wharves.

This stereograph (below) was taken at a different time from the one displayed at the AGNSW, and possibly taken with a different stereoscopic camera. The horse and cart, the man in a light suit standing next to a lamp post on the corner of Patrick and Elizabeth Street, and the side of the building partially displaying the merchant's name "Lovell (?) " who sold pianos - all are missing - yet this second capture adds no more to the line of buildings on the other side of the street than the one above, despite being photographed from a greater distance. Both stereographs were framed in an arched buff mount.

This second stereograph was not stamped by Nevin, unlike the one above which carries his blindstamp impress lower centre between the two images. The stamping of one, and not the other of a similar set-up, appears to have been his common practice. When Nevin took two or more photographs depicting similar scenes, he stamped one either recto or verso, and left the second one blank. Compare this pair of two slightly different stereographs of Elizabeth Street with his pair of  two slightly different stereographs of visitors/surveyors to the Salt Caves at Victoria, Huon Valley.

The reasons behind this practice may vary from experimentation with one, so no need for a stamp, and satisfaction with the other according to the client who commissioned it on commercial terms, hence the stamp. Further copies of the same photograph or those of similar subjects were included as a further possibility for the same commission fee. One stamped photograph per batch of 100 or per a yearly fee was required by photographers to register copyright of a particular trademark with the Office of the Registrar of Patents, Customs House, Hobart. Tasmanian photographers' copyright of their work was regulated by the Registration of Trade Marks Act 28, No. 6, Victoria, from 1864. Only two copies of their trade mark, applied to the "goods" they were intended to protect were required to be deposited with the Registrar. The applicant was issued with a one year Provisional Certificate, and if no objection was raised, the copyright endured absolute for a period of 14 years. Nevin registered copyright of at least six commercial trademarks and at least one of his trademarks, registered under colonial warrant and featuring the Supreme Court's Royal Arms insignia, was held jointly when commissioned by the Hobart City Council. This pair of slightly different stereographs of the same scene taken at different times, like those taken at the Salt Caves, are most likely estrays from the Lands and Survey Department, supplied at the request of  James Erskine Calder, Surveyor-General.



Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1868
140 Elizabeth St. Hobart showing Nevin's studio, formerly Alfred Bock's, "three doors from Patrick St."
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Ref: Q1994.56.33.
Photo taken at TMAG 10th November 2014
Photo copyright © KLW NFC 2014 ARR



Verso: Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1868
140 Elizabeth St. Hobart showing Nevin's studio, formerly Alfred Bock's, "three doors from Patrick St."
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Ref: Q1994.56.33.
Photo taken at TMAG 10th November 2014
Photo copyright © KLW NFC 2014 ARR

The Mugshot
One reviewer of the exhibition The Photograph and Australia has noted the lack of mugshots apart from Ned Kelly's rap sheet bearing two photographs. Others which were included were not identified as such. This vignette by Thomas Nevin of William Russell, who was imprisoned for two months in 1882, is a case in point, despite the fact that the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery submitted it as a prisoner mugshot with the detail of Russell's prison sentence written on the verso, albeit unattributed.



Exhibited at the AGNSW 2015

Details per page 299 of Catalogue, The Photograph and Australia

"William Rusille (?) /native/free (?) /2 months c 1874
carte-de-visite
10.3 x 6.3 cm (card)
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart
Q15623"

The AGNSW exhibitors have transcribed information from barely legible details on the verso of this photograph, but added the date "1874" through a common misconception. The date "1874" ascribed to this photograph is an error. It is a date which has been routinely applied to all carte-de-visite mounted photographs of Tasmanian prisoners/convicts held in public collections when nothing is known of the prisoner's history at the time the photograph was taken. It is an error caused by an early 20th century exhibitor who wrote "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" across the versos of the extant 300 or so cdvs of "convicts" purely in the interests of government-sponsored penal heritage tourism in the 1920s to coincide with the making of the film For The Term of His Natural Life at Port Arthur, based on Marcus Clarke's 1874 novel.



Recto and verso of mugshot of William Russell
There is no date inscribed on verso.
TMAG Collection: Ref: Q15623

This prisoner, Willliam Russell, was photographed once on incarceration in February 1882 at the Hobart Gaol. He was tried at Hobart on 17th February 1882 for unlawfully beating, sentenced to two months, and discharged on 19th April 1882. He was listed as Free, born in Tasmania ca. 1856, and bearing an unusual tattoo on his upper right arm: "EYGM". The police gazette* record of his age and height was corrected a week later on 28th April 1882.

This photograph, the booking shot, which was printed first as a vignette (cloudy background), was reprinted in an oval mount two month's later, in April 1882, when William Russell was discharged. For such a short sentence of two months, when the prisoner's physical appearance is unlikely to have changed, a reprint of the booking shot rather than a new photograph seems to have satisfied police requirements. The unusual feature of this photograph and many others printed for gaol records right up to the last of Thomas Nevin's involvement with prisoner identification photography in 1888 is the use of an oval mount typical of his earlier commercial practice. Only the full frontal gaze had changed from the earlier pose with the prisoner's eyelines deflected to left or right of the frame.

Taken by Constable John Nevin and Thomas J. Nevin, February 1882, Hobart Gaol.





*Source: Tasmania Reports of Crimes Information for Police, J. Barnard, Gov't Printer.