Face Value: The Assassination of Portrait Painting by Photography, 1850–1870

About the author

Frank Campbell spent twenty-six years as a university academic in Australia, Britain, Chile and elsewhere. His teaching and research covered history, economics, sociology and architecture. As academe slid inexorably into corporatism, he left his tenured university job for a new career in the early 1990s. Farming and environmentalism competed with research into British and colonial art and art history, including seven years of international art authentication. For fifteen years (1994–2008), he wrote monthly non-fiction book reviews for The Australian.

Gathering Wildflowers I

Dedication

In memory of Mary Blanche Campbell (1922–2013)

List of figures

1. Paul Sandby, Old Charlton, Kent

2. St Luke’s, Old Charlton

3. Richard Noble’s death certificate

4. Robert Heysham Noble, A Coastal Town

5. Riccardo Nobili, Inside Cornelio Brewery

6. Richard Pratchett Noble, A Guide to Water Colour Painting

7. Richard Pratchett Noble, Near Mortlake

8. Richard Pratchett Noble, Hammersmith Bridge

9. Richard Pratchett Noble, A Ford in Surrey

10. Richard Pratchett Noble, Pastoral bliss

11. Richard Noble, View of Market Square

12. Richard Noble, William Strover Birkin

13. Richard Noble, John Neale

14. Richard Noble, The Favourite Gig Horse

15. Richard Noble, Benedetto John Bernasconi

16. Richard Noble, The Russell-Jones Children

17. Richard Noble, Elizabeth Solomon

18. Richard Noble, John Solomon

19. Richard Noble, Sarah Winefred Scarvell

20. The Ashburton

21. Richard Noble, Elisha Hayes

22. Richard Noble, Elizabeth Hayes

23. I.H. Berner, George Street Sydney

24. George Street Sydney, after F.C. Terry

25. Clare House, residence of the Scarvell family

26. Correggio, The School of Love

27. Correggio, Ecce Homo

28. Sir William Denison

29. Henry Robinson Smith, Sir Charles Fitzroy

30. William Tweedie, Baron Taunton

31. The SS London foundering in the Bay of Biscay

32. Dr John Woolley is mentioned among the lost

33. Photographic Notes

34. Woodward’s apparatus in action, c.1860s

35. Solar camera advertisement

36. Woodward’s Solar Enlarger, c.1865

37. William Bradley and Eliza Allen, Mrs Sarah Fairfax

38. Richard Noble, Father Michael John Dwyer

39. Eugene Montagu Scott, HRH Prince Alfred

40. Sister ship of the Agnes Rose, the Ann Duthie

41. Richard Noble, Gathering Wildflowers I

42. Inscription verso, Gathering Wildflowers I

43. Cornwallis, Black Ball Line

44. Richard Noble, Gathering Wildflowers II

45. Richard Noble, William Strover Birkin

46. Frederick Grosse, An Old and a New Chum

47. An advertisement for the Queen of the East

48. William Nicholas, A Sydney Shipping Agent

49. Music sheet cover for voyage of the RMS Columbian

50. Richard Noble, James Robert Wilshire

51. Richard Noble, Mrs John Thomas

52. Richard Noble, Mr John Thomas

53. Richard Noble, Australian Cattle Drovers

54. Richard Noble, Portrait of Hugh Mackay?

55. Richard Noble, John Larking Scarvell

56. Richard Noble, Sarah Scarvell

57. Richard Noble, John Redmond Barnes Scarvell

58. Richard Noble, Elizabeth Mary Scarvell

59. Richard Noble, Sydney Scarvell

60. Richard Noble, George Scarvell

61. Richard Noble, Mary Caroline, Mrs Keith Stewart

62. Richard Noble, Commander Robert Johnston R.N.

63. R.C. George, Robert Johnston at 16

64. Robert Dighton, Lt. Col. George Johnston, 1810

65. Detail of ML 227

66. Richard Noble, John Larking Scarvell

67. Richard Noble, Sarah Redmond Scarvell

68. Richard Noble, Thomas Neales Matterson

69. Richard Noble, Portrait of an unidentified man

70. Richard Noble, Portrait of an unidentified woman

71. Detail of ML 1219

72. Portrait of a member of the Knox family, ML 518

73. Portrait of a member of the Knox family, ML 517

74. Joseph Backler, Dr. Michael Anastasius Macartney

75. Sleeping Girl, after Sir Joshua Reynolds

76. 7 Aldgate High Street, c.1910

77. Mrs Magdalena Dalton, Sir William Charles Ross

78. William Charles Ross, Queen Victoria

79. Magdalena Ross, Leopold I, King of the Belgians

80. William Charles Ross, Jane Digby, Lady Ellenborough

81. William Charles Ross, Prince Ernest and … Edward

82. William Charles Ross, Magdalena Ross

83. Herbert Luther Smith, Queen Victoria

84. Edwin Dalton Smith, Portrait of a Lady

85. Edwin Dalton Smith, Captain George Heigham

86. Magdalena Ross, William Wodehouse

87. Magdalena Ross, Major–General Sir H.G.W. Smith

88. Magdalena Ross, Queen Victoria

89. Queen Victoria, Victoria, Albert and Alice

90. Perie, son of a Māori chief

91. Anna Bishop. Portrait based on a daguerrotype

92. Anna Bishop. Detail of colour lithograph

93. Anna Bishop (detail). Albumen print

94. Anna Bishop. Lithograph

95. William Bradley, Rev. John Elder

96. Edwin Dalton, Thomas Jones

97. James Anderson, William Andrews, 1861 (detail)

98. Edwin Dalton, Mrs Frances Jones

99. Edwin Dalton, Dr. Arthur Martin A’Beckett

100. G.B. Shaw, Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson

101. The first Premier, albumen print 102. Verso of a Dalton carte de visite, c.  1858–61

103. Backstamp of Dalton Studio photograph, c. 1864–66

104. A Britzka, built by Fuller of Bath

105. The Royal Standard

106. Verso of carte de visite, 1865

107. Herald, 12th February 1870

108. Charles Calvert, The Frozen Thames, 1814

109. Eliza Bradley, Portrait of George Clint

110. William Bradley, Miss Eliza Calvert

111. Basil Bradley, William Bradley Jr and Mrs Bradley

112. Kitty Cragg, Grasmere

113. Eliza Allen, Lady Young

Foreword

Face Value is both a critique and defence of public cultural institutions. Specifically it is a response to neglect. Neglect of entire tranches of social and cultural history. Neglect by institutions whose task it is to preserve, explain and display the past. Neglect at a time of unprecedented prosperity.

Yet this neglect is not primarily caused by the institutions themselves. Corks on the tide of history, they reflect over time the myopias of shifting ideology and fashion. Reliant on public funding, they are subject to budgetary controls. Public cultural institutions are always optional extras, discretionary, marginal and at times dispensable.

But in the past thirty years the residual independence of universities, libraries and galleries has been profoundly compromised. Corporate power and ideology have subverted major cultural institutions. Humanities funding has been reduced by the new corporate imperatives. Intellectual independence is replaced by a corporate-generated image of itself. Research is both shrunken and distorted. Even that unique national treasure, the National Library's Trove, is threatened.

Corporatism is not only an exterior force. Every cultural institution now harbours the virus. They mimic the corporation. The result is a schizophrenic conflict of values. Managerialism rules. Greatly expanded, the executive siphons resources and power from professional staff, who become mere employees. These employees are controlled, gagged and marginalised by insecure employment. They are rewarded for silence and obedience. The demoralisation of university academics for instance was evident by the mid-1990s. Now it is terminal.

The role of the corporation is, first and foremost, to project and protect its image. Everything is subordinated to that end.

Corporatism is an extension of the legal personality of the proprietary limited company. Perhaps tolerable in the private sphere, it is inappropriate and corrosive in the public domain.

It’s not about the quantum of money. It’s about priority, distribution and control of resources. The vast increase in size and wealth of universities since 1990 is inversely proportional to the decline of the Humanities, social sciences and pure sciences. Libraries and galleries, without the massive student-fee income of tertiary education, are even more vulnerable.

As institutions falter, Face Value shows that individuals with minimal resources can reduce the cultural damage done by this new, aggressive strain of spurious utilitarianism. But of course such research depends on libraries and galleries. They must be protected at all costs.

Face Value is both a guide to research techniques in the internet era and a history of a specific, hitherto disregarded period in colonial and British art.

Biographies have been established in place of assorted, often erroneous fragments of information. General observations based on these fragments are often false or misleading. Yet they pass as art history, often unchallenged. The men were buried deep, but the women were traduced—their role and significance masked by 19th century prejudice. Fifty years of recent feminism has signally failed to redress the balance.

Primary sources were the first priority: census, births, deaths and marriages, wills, church records, shipping lists, catalogues and newspapers. Only then did the networks of artists, photographers and their associates emerge. Finally, the Dickensian stories of serendipity, betrayal and tragedy took shape in the mists of the past.

History is always a work in progress. One hopes that the democratic power of the internet will lead to corrections and expansion of this story on the associated website.

Face Value appears under the imprint Robert Owen Press. This is an indulgent gesture to my great great great uncle Robert Owen (1771—1858). Owen pioneered mitigation of the excesses of capitalism and sectarianism.

December 8th 2015

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the staff of the many public libraries and galleries who assisted this research, especially the Mitchell Library/State Library of NSW. The Royal Collection Trust and the National Portrait Galleries of Britain and Australia were likewise accommodating. Also, all but one institution (Art Gallery of NSW) waived the sometimes steep image reproduction fees which would have otherwise amounted to thousands of dollars. For their forbearance they receive numerous corrections to/amplifications of their catalogues. This gratitude is qualified however: art galleries must cease to treat out-of-copyright works as if they had the right to charge scholars for image reproduction. We are doing their work for them, for nothing. Public libraries did not demand money for such images.

Abbreviations

AASD: Australian Art Sales Digest

AGNSW: Art Gallery of NSW

AGSA: Art Gallery of South Australia

Buscombe: Eve Buscombe, Artists in Early Australia.

BI: British Institution

BM: British Museum

DAAO: Design and Art Australia Online

Herald: Sydney Morning Herald

Kerr: Joan Kerr, ed. The Dictionary of Australian Artists...to 1870.

ML: Mitchell Library

MLA: Member of the Legislative Assembly

MLC: Member of the Legislative Council

NGA: National Gallery of Australia

NGV: National Gallery of Victoria

NLA: National Library of Australia

NPG: National Portrait Gallery, London

NPGA: National Portrait Gallery, Australia

RA: Royal Academy

RBA: Royal Society of British Artists

RC: Royal Collection

RCA: Royal College of Art

RWS: Royal Watercolour Society

SLNSW: State Library of NSW

SLSA: State Library of South Australia

VA: Victoria and Albert Museum

Introduction

Richard Noble was a leading Australian colonial artist, yet remains an enigma. His work hangs in major institutions but information on the artist’s life is scant and inaccurate. Many of Noble’s works are misattributed or unrecognised. His art therefore is poorly understood and its significance minimised. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools in London and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bruges in the late 1820s and early 1830s, Noble appears in Sydney in the 1850s as if from nowhere, only to vanish without trace in the 1860s.

Art history offers several theories as to Noble’s identity and career, but each is subverted by false assumptions, a plethora of other Nobles and neglect of intriguing clues. The primary cause of this confusion is lack of basic biographical research. Routinely generated records in Australia and Britain were indequately examined or not examined at all: census, shipping lists, directories, newspapers, church records and the like.

These records have now been searched, revealing Richard Noble’s basic biography from birth to death. The skeleton exhumed, some flesh can be put on the bones. What emerges is a Dickensian tale of two cities, of great expectations dashed. An artist of modest means struggles for recognition in London then, late in life, embarks for distant Australia. Success is immediate. Gradually however the limitations of the colony erode his brilliant career. Sydney is no metropolis, just a dusty town of sixty thousand people. Gold sucks emigrants and wealth to Victoria. Sydney grows, but is rapidly eclipsed by Melbourne. On arrival in 1855, Noble is one of a tiny group of professionally trained artists in the colony, but other British artists on the same quest soon provide strong competition. Ominously, the rise of photography undermines demand for portrait painting, Noble’s sole source of income. Noble assiduously collaborated with photographers to meet this threat, copying and overpainting photographs in oil and pastel (crayon), including solar portraits, greatly enlarged photographic images which were then overpainted. These pictures were convincing likenesses, cheaper than conventional oils or pastels.

To make ends meet, Noble also took on pupils.

It was all to no avail. The demand for large, high-quality overpainted photographic portraits in oils quickly faded. The more opaque the colour, the greater the skill needed to enhance a photograph. Smaller images coloured in crayon or watercolour were preferred. These required less time and skill. Photographic studios became industrial, churning out portraits coloured by artisans in the manner of fine china factories. A new category appeared in trade directories: photographic colourist. Photographers prospered as rapidly as portraitists slid into genteel poverty. Noble could only watch as failed and disgraced London artist Edwin Dalton, now colonial photographer, rode around Sydney from his Vaucluse villa in a lavish imported Phaeton. A relentless self-promoter, Dalton’s career was the converse of Noble’s. Australian art history takes Dalton at face value, knowing nothing of his scandalous fall from grace in London or his deceptions in Sydney. Consequently Dalton and his milieu are here analysed in depth. Dalton, through his familial connections with the Fitzrovian miniaturists led by Sir William Charles Ross, a favourite of Queen Victoria, literally traded on those connections in Sydney. In just twelve years, Dalton made a fortune at the expense of superior artists such as Richard Noble.

Lucrative public commissions might have saved Noble and other Sydney painters, but these were often given to artists in London. Metropolitan status trumped the colonials. The protestations of local portraitists were no match for metropolitan prestige.

At the end of 1868, Noble, then 62, sold up and sailed for England. He was also farewelling his wife Harriette, buried in Devonshire Street Cemetery, close to their marital home at Raper’s Cottage, Strawberry Hill.

There were no recorded farewells or testimonials for the artist in Sydney.

Noble returned to a London transformed. What was semi-rural Kent in his early years was now suburban Peckham in the sprawling metropolis. His existence thereafter must have been disillusioning, living with his brother-in-law Robert Slade, dependent on Slade’s in-house artificial florist business. To the end, Richard Noble defined himself as a portrait artist, but there is no evidence of advertising or commissions.

In a final irony, no image of the portraitist is known to exist. Childless, there was no immediate family to remember him. His second wife outlived him by only six years. He left no will. Presumably there was nothing left to leave.

Richard Noble died of bronchitis aged 76, at home in Peckham, forgotten both in London and the Antipodes.

Tracking Noble down would depend entirely on the routine record-keeping of the state. A common name amongst millions of ordinary citizens.

1. Researching the pitifully neglected: Methods

Scanty, erroneous and misleading information on colonial artists applies not only to Richard Noble. To illuminate Noble and his circle it was necessary to research sitters, artists, framers and photographers. Given that there are dozens of relevant figures, a sample only has been examined.

Initially, one assumed that Noble was an isolated instance of poor cataloguing. As the scope of the research widened it became clear that virtually all persons examined were similarly afflicted. This can hardly be attributed to chance. Cataloguers themselves are not the source of the malaise. They merely repeat what they find in general reference works.

Neither is the phenomenon specifically Australian. Inadequate and inaccurate cataloguing is also endemic in British institutions. Entries for most persons relevant to this enquiry confuse names, lack dates and other basic biographical data. Many corrections have been made in the course of this research to the catalogues of several British galleries and museums, such as the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Collection.

Cross-referencing of dramatis personae is essential for both accuracy and higher-order assessments of individuals and groups.

Research here includes for example a pair of portraits of Maitland surgeon Dr Michael Macartney and his wife Matilda which are said by Buscombe (1979) to be autograph Noble. In fact they are by Joseph Backler. Macartney’s biography had to be investigated in