Tag: salt paper stereographs

Group at the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley, Tasmania

Thomas Nevin’s stereographs from the Pedder collection

May 11, 2020

Lawyers, barristers, magistrates, politicians, police superintendents, detectives, their families and their prisoners were photographed by Thomas J. Nevin from the late 1860s to the 1880s. The Pedder family of magistrates and police officers, the family of solicitor John Woodcock Graves the younger, the McVilly family of teachers and police officers, and the family of Attorney-General the Hon. W. R. Giblin, all made use of Thomas J. Nevin’s commission with the colonial government’s Lands and Survey Department, the Municipal Police Office and Mayor’s Court, and the Hobart City Corporation to provide them with stereographic views and carte-de-visite portraits. The stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1868-1870 of the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley bearing the inscription “A. Pedder” on verso, is one of least four held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collections. Solicitor Alfred Pedder (1881-1977) may have kept these stereographs by Thomas Nevin from the estate of his father, Police Superintendent Frederick Pedder (1841-1923) who was a colleague of Nevin’s at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart. Alfred Pedder’s daughter Sylvia in turn may have donated them to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in the 1970s … More Thomas Nevin’s stereographs from the Pedder collection

The Photographer’s wife at the studio

August 3, 2010

In 1944, the French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954) published a short story called The Photographer’s Wife (La Dame du Photographe 1944), in which Mme Armand, the wife of the photographer – he who is referred to by their neighbour as “little old Big Eyes” – attempts suicide, some might think for an adulterous liaison, while she herself explains the reason as an unbearably trivial life. The drug she self-administers is not named, but at the moment when old Big Eyes raises the alarm, his hands are “all covered with hyposulphite” from a broken bottle in the studio. Hyposulphite was used in daguerreotype, ambrotype and collodion photography, one of several photochemicals including arsenic and cyanide with ready appeal to a self-poisoner. Elizabeth Rachel Day’s life as the wife of photographer Thomas J. Nevin in colonial Tasmania was very different from Colette’s literary portrait. However, from her marriage in 1871 until her husband’s residential appointment at the Hobart Town Hall in 1876, she lived and slept above a veritable factory of poisonous chemicals stored and used in her husband’s studio, a double-windowed building and glasshouse with the business name of The City Photographic Establishment, located at 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart. … More The Photographer’s wife at the studio

Ferns, convicts, and Charles Darwin

February 20, 2009

In some of the dampest ravines, tree- ferns flourished in an extraordinary manner; I saw one which must have been at least twenty feet high to the base of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six feet. The fronds forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy shade, like that of the first hour of the night.

The summit of the mountain is broad and flat, and is composed of huge angular masses of naked greenstone. Its elevation is 3100 feet above the level of the sea. The day was splendidly clear, and we enjoyed a most extensive view; to the north, the country appeared a mass of wooded mountains, of about the same height with that on which we were standing, and with an equally tame outline: to the south the broken land and water, forming many intricate bays, was mapped with clearness before us. After staying some hours on the summit, we found a better way to descend, but did not reach the Beagle till eight o’clock, after a severe day’s work. (Feb. 6, 1836: pp 486-7) … More Ferns, convicts, and Charles Darwin

Thomas Nevin’s  stereography

February 1, 2009

The TMAG holds fifty or more prisoner or convict photographs taken by Thomas Nevin for the Municipal Police Office and Hobart Gaol, and another sixty or so of his cartes-de-visite and stereographs, called ‘stereoscopes’ in the former catalogue entries. His photographs of convicts held at the TMAG were wrongly attributed to A.H. Boyd, a result of the confusion generated by researcher Chris Long, which appeared in the TMAG’s publication, Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940: A Directory (1995:36). … More Thomas Nevin’s  stereography

Melville Street from the Hobart Gaol 140 years ago

June 22, 2008

This stereograph, and others taken at the same time and place of the Prisoners Barracks (see below) are held at the State Library of Tasmania, and although unattributed, they were most likely taken by Thomas Nevin working with Alfred Bock between 1863-1866 at their studio, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart. The Nevin brothers’ association with the Hon. W. R. Giblin and the Hobart Gaol continued throughout the 1870s and 1880s while Nevin was contracted to the Municipal Police Office as prisons photographer, both as a commercial photographer on tender, and as a full-time civil servant. His principal studio, The City Photographic Establishment, was located one block away, close to the corner of Melville and Elizabeth Streets directly to the west. … More Melville Street from the Hobart Gaol 140 years ago

Stereographs by Clifford & Nevin at ‘Narryna’

January 6, 2008

This is an interactive display at the Narryna Heritage Museum. The stereos are truly 3D. The visitor gains an immediate understanding of the Victorian fascination with this “advanced” photography. Three images can be seen, not just one: the central image appears in deep perspective, with the image split into halves on either side. … More Stereographs by Clifford & Nevin at ‘Narryna’

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery databases

November 1, 2007

This Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery notice about their photographic collections appeared in November 2006. It is now September 2010, and the promised website with viewable databases of their vast photographic holdings is still not up and running. The TMAG holds a sizable collection of rare works by Thomas J. Nevin, including photographs of convicts taken in the 1870s, stereographs and studio portraits. … More Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery databases

River Derwent, stereograph by Thomas J, Nevin 1860s

Thomas Nevin & Samuel Clifford’s partnership and identical views 1860s-70s

October 31, 2007

Professional photographers Samuel Clifford and Thomas J. Nevin shared a long friendship and partnership from the early 1860s until Clifford’s death in 1890. They produced landscapes in stereographic format for the local and intercolonial tourist trade, both individually and collaboratively sharing their stock of negatives and prints from as early as 1865 while Nevin was still at his New Town studio. Several cartes-de-visite with the inscription on verso “Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town” which were reprinted by Clifford from Nevin’s stock after 1876, are held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. A few are held in private collections … More Thomas Nevin & Samuel Clifford’s partnership and identical views 1860s-70s

Group at the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley, Tasmania

At Lady Franklin’s Museum, Kangaroo Valley

June 28, 2007

The Pedder Collection (TMAG)
Lawyers, barristers, magistrates, politicians, police superintendents, detectives, their families and their prisoners were photographed by Thomas J. Nevin from the late 1860s to the 1880s. The Pedder family of magistrates and police officers, the family of solicitor John Woodcock Graves the younger, the McVilly family of teachers and police officers, and the family of Attorney-General the Hon. W. R. Giblin, all made use of Thomas J. Nevin’s commission with the colonial government’s Lands and Survey Department, the Municipal Police Office and Mayor’s Court, and the Hobart City Corporation to provide them with stereographic views and carte-de-visite portraits. The stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1868-1870 of the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley bearing the inscription “A. Pedder” on verso, is one of least four held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collections. Solicitor Alfred Pedder (1881-1977) may have kept these stereographs by Thomas Nevin from the estate of his father, Police Superintendent Frederick Pedder (1841-1923) who was a colleague of Nevin’s at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart. Alfred Pedder’s daughter Sylvia in turn may have donated them to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in the 1970s … More At Lady Franklin’s Museum, Kangaroo Valley

Clifford & Nevin at the Salmon Ponds and Plenty 1860s-1870s

June 7, 2007

Samuel Clifford’s name appears only twice in the weekly police gazettes, called Tasmania Reports of Crimes Information for Police between the years 1866-1880, and in both instances because he was a victim of theft: some silver cutlery and a table cloth were stolen from his house and reported on 17th October 1873, and most wrenching of all, his camera was stolen while staying at the Wilmot Arms at Green Ponds, in the district where these stereographs of the Salmon Ponds were taken. No doubt Samuel Clifford and Thomas Nevin made many trips to the Green Ponds area, and since Clifford reprinted so many of Nevin’s commercial negatives from 1876, placing an accurate date and even a sole attribution to Clifford on the extant albums of views etc is far from straightforward. … More Clifford & Nevin at the Salmon Ponds and Plenty 1860s-1870s

State Library of Tasmania’s  “Unknown”

April 16, 2007

This stereograph is listed at the State Library of Tasmania as unattributed – “Creator: Unknown” with the title “House in Newtown”. It is dated to 1870, although the majority of Thomas J. Nevin’s early stereographs were produced from his New Town studio in the mid to late 1860s. By 1868 he was principally operating from his city studio at 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart, although he maintained the New Town studio concurrently with his civil service during the years 1876-1880 at the Hobart Town Hall and police work in the courts until the birth of his last child in 1888. … More State Library of Tasmania’s  “Unknown”