G.T. Stilwell's letter to Mrs Shelverton 1977

G. T. STILWELL, Special Colections, Allport Library Tasmania
Mrs SHELVERTON, grand daughter of photographer T. J. NEVIN and Elizabeth Rachel (Day) NEVIN
EXHIBITION of convict photographs 1870s taken by T. J. NEVIN, QVMAG Launceston, 1977

Preparations began in early 1977 for the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery's exhibition of Thomas J. Nevin's photographs of Tasmanian prisoners taken for police and prison records in the 1870s which were (re)discovered among their John Watt Beattie holdings which were acquired by the QVMAG from Beattie's estate on his death in 1930.



Geoffrey Stilwell, Special Collections Librarian
Allport Library, State Library of Tasmania
Mercury photo 1990

The late Geoffrey Stilwell, curator of Special Collections at the State Library of Tasmania, collected biographical data on professional photographer Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923) from a diverse range of sources, including information from Mrs Jean Shelverton, a grand-daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Rachel (Day) Nevin. Mrs Shelverton's mother Mary Ann (Nevin) Drew who was known as Minnie to living descendants,was the second daughter and fifth child (to survive), born to photographer Thomas and Elizabeth Nevin on November 9th, 1884, in Hobart, Tasmania.



G.T. Stilwell's letter to Mrs Shelverton, 25 February 1977
Courtesy of the State Library of Tasmania

TRANSCRIPT

Dear Mrs Shelverton

Miss Beatrice Kelly suggested I write to you. I understand from her that you are a descendant of Thomas J. Nevin the photographer who succeeded to Alfred Bock's practice in the late 1860s. The Queen Victoria Museum has a large number of photographs by Nevin of the convicts at Port Arthur taken in the early 'seventies. They are soon to display these and are keen to have biographical information about the photographer. I wonder if you could tell me anything about him such as where he was born and when, when he came to Australia, did he come straight to Tasmania, had he any previous photographic training, where and when and to whom he was married and when and where he died. I am sorry to ask so many questions but there is now a great interest in our early photographers and it is important these details be recorded.

Yours sincerely,
(G.T.S.) initials
G.T. Stilwell
LIBRARIAN, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
GTS/DMM

Mrs Shelverton provided information in answer to these questions from documents passed down from Thomas J. Nevin's estate to her mother. However, there were many more documents and photographs from the Nevin family estate still untouched in trunks, shoe boxes and garages belonging to the descendants of Thomas and Elizabeth Nevin's other five children who were not aware of the forthcoming exhibitions at the Art Gallery of NSW (1976) and the QVMAG (1977) when the State Library of Tasmania began their research. And there were many more examples of Thomas J. Nevin's "convict portraits" and other examples of his photographic work held in public institutions which were yet to be displayed online at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Archives Office and State Library of Tasmania, the State Library of Victoria, the National Library of Australia and the State Library of NSW, apart from private collections.

A summary document was then prepared by the State Library of Tasmania, using information from shipping records held at the Archives Office of Tasmania (MB2/98) and Mrs Shelverton's information. The information was not correct in the detail of Thomas J. Nevin's date of death (1923, Southern Regional Cemetery burial records).



Biographical information on Thomas Nevin
G.T. Stilwell files, courtesy State Library of Tasmania

The handwritten insertion of Thomas J. Nevin's middle initial "J" (James) appears on this document to indicate its inclusion in his name as it appears on his government contractor stamp. The versos of a number of photographs by Nevin held at the QVMAG and the State Library of NSW Mitchell Collection are stamped with his government stamp signifying his joint copyright under a colonial Royal Warrant. The stamp included his vocational designation "T. J. Nevin Photographic Artist" and the Royal Arms insignia, a stamp he was using by February 1872.

Confusion about Thomas J. Nevin the photographer and his son by the same name - T. J. Nevin jnr (1874-1948) - has arisen in the course of the last thirty years. Thomas and Elizabeth's second child and first-born son, Thomas James Nevin jnr was born in May 1874, his birth registered by Thomas snr's  father-in-law Captain James Day, while Thomas Nevin was away on business at the Port Arthur prison. The date "1874" was transcribed across the versos of several hundred of these Nevin convict photographs by archivists in the early 1900s. Known as "Sonny" to the family, Thomas J. Nevin jnr did not become a photographer. He was listed as a bootmaker on the 1905 electoral rolls, lived in California with his wife Gertrude Tennyson Bates in the 1920s, and joined the Salvation Army in Hobart sometime in the 1940s.



Prisoner SMITH, William per Rodney 3
QVMAG Collection Ref: QM: 1985 P: 131
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin 1874
Verso stamped with Nevin’s Royal Arms government contractor stamp

In April 1977, Geoffrey Stilwell conveyed the biographical information per Mrs Shelverton to the curator of T. J. Nevin's convict photographs' exhibition at the QVMAG, John McPhee, in this letter:



Letter to John McPhee, curator, QVMAG, 4 April, 1977.
Courtesy State Library of Tasmania

TRANSCRIPT

Dear Mr McPhee,
At last I have some biographical details about Thomas Nevin though I am afraid these are somewhat late for your exhibition. These were mainly supplied by his granddaughter Mrs Shelverton.

Thomas Nevin was born on 28 August 1842 near Belfast, Northern Ireland (Mrs S[helverton]). He was the son of Private John Nevin and Mary his wife whom he accompanied on the convict ship Fairlie which arrived at Hobart Town in July 1852. John who was one of the guards of this vessel was also accompanied by his other children Mary A. and Rebecca both under fourteen and Will[iam] J under a year old (MB2/98).

The following marriage notice appeared in the Mercury of 14 July 1871.

NEVIN-DAY – On Wednesday, 12th July, at the Wesleyan Chapel, Kangaroo Valley, by the Rev. J. Hutchison [sic], Thomas, eldest son of Mr. J. Nevin, of Kangaroo Valley, to Elizabeth Rachael, eldest daughter of Captain Day, of Hobart Town.

Kangaroo Valley is now know as Lenah Valley. From about 1876 to 1880 he lived at the Town Hall, Hobart as caretaker. Two of his four sons were born at the Town Hall residence. He had in addition two daughters one of whom was Mrs Shelverton’s mother.*

According to Mrs Shelverton he died about 1922, she is not sure of the date, and was buried at Cornelian Bay. The tombstone has now fallen over.

Yours sincerely,
[signed] G.T. STILWELL
Librarian, Special Collections

This was only the beginning of G.T. Stilwell's research. Later in 1977, two more grand daughters of Thomas and Elizabeth Nevin (daughters of their youngest son Albert) visited the exhibition at the QVMAG in Launceston. In 1978, a great grand daughter interviewed G.T. Stilwell at length, providing him with more information, including details about photographic items by the firm Nevin & Smith held in family collections. This greatly respected specialist of Tasmanian colonial collections, G.T. Stilwell, had never any doubt about his conviction of T. J. Nevin's attribution as the photographer of the Tasmanian 'convict portraits' held at the QVMAG, duplicates of which are held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the National Library of Australia, a conviction he later published with Professor Joan Kerr in 1992.

RELATED POSTS main weblog

• Nevins on sick list during voyage out on Fairlie 1852
• Mary and John Nevin, Thomas Nevin’s parents
• Professor Joan Kerr (DAA ed. 1992)
• John McPhee on Nevin in 1977 and 2007 at the QVMAG
• The Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery Convicts 1977

Updated May 2010

Clifford & Nevin's cartes: tints versus daubs

HAND-COLOURED PORTRAITS full-length
PHOTOGRAPHERS Samuel CLIFFORD and Thomas J. NEVIN, Tasmania 1860s

"Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town"
The bright touch of colour highlighting the girl's posy or sprig of holly on a sepia toned carte-de-visite is a common attribute of Thomas J. Nevin's early portraits of private citizens. Another two portraits with the same red and green sprig show a young man named William Maguire in one (held at the TMAG and State Library of Tasmania) and in another of a baby stamped verso with Nevin's Royal Arms government contractor warrant (Lucy Bachelor Private Collection). The verso of this carte of a teenage girl bears the handwritten inscription of "Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town."



Hand coloured carte-de-visite, full length of teenage girl
Photographers Clifford and Nevin, ca late 1860s
Verso of above: handwritten inscription Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town
Copyright © The Private Collection of G.T. Harrisson 2006

Another portrait bearing the same Clifford & Nevin inscription (below) appears on the verso of the heavily tinted carte of a young man standing next to a chair:



Hand coloured carte-de-visite, full length of young man and kitchen chair
Scans courtesy © The Private Collection of John and Robyn McCullagh 2005 ARR

A third cdv bearing the inscription "Clifford & Nevin, Hobart Town" is held at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston. The handwriting, which may well be Thomas Nevin's or Samuel Clifford's, varies slightly from carte to carte.



This example of the handwritten inscription appears on the verso of a carte depicting two men (below) held at the QVMAG and reprinted in Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940: A Directory (TMAG, 1995, page 34). The writer/editor assumed that the subjects in the image were the photographers Samuel Clifford and Thomas Nevin because of the handwritten inscription of their names on the verso, but several cdv's with the same inscription are extant, including the one (above) from the McCullagh Collection of the young man with left hand on a kitchen chair. Neither man in this photograph is Thomas J. Nevin or Samuel Clifford. The red and violet colouring is abundant, and not the work of either photographer.



Hand-coloured cdv of two men, one standing, one sitting
Clifford and Nevin Hobart Town signed verso, QVMAG Collection

These two images may seem to differ in provenance but not in the strange red blobs arranged in vertical lines leading straight from the bottom of the frame and up the carpet, defying conventional perspective. Both probably originated from the same family in northern Tasmania, both daubed by the same person. This one of the two men was purchased by the QVMAG in 1978. The cdv of the young man with his hand on a kitchen chair belongs to a northern Tasmanian private collector.

Assumptions
Neither man pictured is photographer Thomas Nevin or his brother Constable John (aka Jack) Nevin, nor their father John Nevin snr. None of these cdv's was ever held in the family collections of Thomas Nevin's descendants, and none was coloured in this way by Nevin or any of his family. The cdv of the two men was recently exhibited at the QVMAG and published in the catalogue The Painted Portrait Photograph in Tasmania (John McPhee 2007).



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.
Photos copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2009 ARR



Page 62 - the text accompanying the photograph in the exhibition catalogue The Painted Portrait Photograph in Tasmania (McPhee, QVMAG 2007).

The first paragraph in the accompanying text gives no factual information. The identities of the men may be unknown, but the tall man standing on the left closely resembles an officer at Port Arthur and member of the officers' cricket team, photographed by Alfred Bock ca 1864 when Thomas Nevin was assisting Bock. If so, Nevin's association with Samuel Clifford would also date to the early sixties, and place him with Clifford at Port Arthur ca. 1865 or earlier. Several stereographs of the buildings there are dated to ca 1865 with Clifford's attribution (Archives Office of Tasmania). Nevin's skills in stereographic production were certainly learnt from Clifford rather than from Bock.

The third paragraph too assumes the relationship with Samuel Clifford was brief and transitory and dated to 1870, which was not the case. When Thomas Nevin advertised his retirement from commercial photography (to take up his appointment as a civil servant whose duties included rendering photographic services at the Town Hall and Police Office) in the Hobart Mercury, 17th January, 1876, Samuel Clifford announced in the same advertisement that he had acquired Nevin's negatives and would reprint them for Nevin's private clients on request. Clifford had not ceased practice in 1873, therefore, as most commentators have assumed, and many extant prints with Samuel Clifford's stamp or attribution are likely to be reprints from Nevin's negatives. When Clifford sold his stock to the Anson brothers in 1878, they reprinted the negatives of both Nevin and Clifford, and those same negatives were reprinted again when John Watt Beattie acquired the Anson brothers' studio in 1892.



Above: Samuel Clifford's advertisement in the Mercury January 17th 1876, advising he had acquired Nevin's negatives.

The second paragraph assumes the colouring to be the work of the studio colourist, which was not the case. The colouring was the work of the purchaser of the cdv, probably by a child, and not by either photographer's studio. What has happened here is the inclusion of this carte into a category devised by the exhibition curator called The Photographer's Studio (p.54 of the catalogue), where all other items in the category are deemed to have been coloured before sale. By such means and comparisons the commentary on this one photograph attributed to Clifford and Nevin (p.63) would like to suggest - and not without derision- the childish daubs to be the amateurish work of the junior partner Nevin. The museum's accession records would have shown McPhee that the colouring in this photograph, as in the others listed here which have the same strange daubs, all share provenance from a northern Tasmania family, not related to the photographers, who purchased and then coloured them. This scenario, it seems, never occurred to the exhibitors.