Tag: Thomas Nevin

A group at the Beacon Light, kunanyi/Mt. Wellington

Thomas Nevin on kunanyi/Mount Wellington 1860s

June 19, 2015

Mount Wellington was commonly referred to as Table Mountain by explorers to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) from Bligh’s visit in 1791 until 1832 when Matthew Flinders renamed it after the Duke of Wellington. Under dual-naming policy, the mountain is known as kunanyi in Palawa-kani, the revived composite language of Tasmanian Aborigines. Copies of this selection of stereographs taken by Thomas J. Nevin, late 1860s, on and around the summit of kunanyi/Mount Wellington, were sourced from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Collection in 2015. … More Thomas Nevin on kunanyi/Mount Wellington 1860s

Photographers A. Bock, S. Clifford and T. Nevin at Port Arthur

December 21, 2013

In late March, 1866, photographer Alfred Bock was at the Port Arthur prison site on the Tasman Peninsula, 60 kms south of Hobart at the request of its Commandant, James Boyd. Alfred Bock’s studio – The City Photographic Establishment – at 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart, was manned by his junior partner Thomas Nevin and his apprentice, younger brother William Bock, in his absence. Bock’s mission at Port Arthur was to provide a series of landscapes and portraits of officials. However, it was photographer Samuel Clifford, Nevin’s friend and mentor, of Liverpool Street, Hobart, who was the source and supplier of photographic materials to the Port Arthur prison administration, in this instance for Alfred Bock in March 1866, and again in August 1873, when Clifford himself visited the prison site. … More Photographers A. Bock, S. Clifford and T. Nevin at Port Arthur

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

June 24, 2013

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

Alfred Bock’s other apprentice: William Bock

February 8, 2013

WILLIAM BOCK left Tasmania in 1868, returned in 1874 to marry his fiance Rebecca Finlay, and returned to Wellington New Zealand where he thrived as an engraver, lithographic printer,medallist, stamp designer, and illuminator. William Bock is considered the most important and innovative contributor to the development of New Zealand stamp production from 1875 to 1931, He died in 1932. … More Alfred Bock’s other apprentice: William Bock

Good reading for The Kid 1921 : Tasmanian police gazettes

September 26, 2010

In 1884, the Colonial Government of Tasmania changed the name of its weekly police gazette to Tasmania Police Gazette for Police Information Only. The cover of each issue prior to 1884 was headed Tasmania Reports of Crime For Police Information (and the alternative – Information for Police) which was published by the government printer James Barnard dating back to its first appearance in 1861 … More Good reading for The Kid 1921 : Tasmanian police gazettes

Melville Street from the Hobart Gaol 165 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 J. 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 Thomas Nevin was contracted to the Municipal Police Office as prisons photographer, both as a commercial photographer and government contractor, 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 165 years ago

Poster of Thomas Nevin’s convict portraits 1870s

January 11, 2008

Who were they? They were T.J. Nevin’s sitters for police records, mostly “Supreme Court men” photographed on committal for trial at the Supreme Court adjoining the Hobart Gaol when they were isolated in silence for a month after sentencing. If sentenced for a long term at the Supreme Court Launceston, they were photographed, bathed, shaved and dressed on being received in Hobart. These procedures, past and present, were reported at length by a visitor to the Hobart Gaol and Supreme Court in The Mercury, 8th July 1882: … More Poster of Thomas Nevin’s convict portraits 1870s

Prisoner Charles BROWN aka Wm FORSTER: The Bulletin, May 16, 1978

October 4, 2007

The Bulletin journalist had no doubt about the name of the photographer, although s/he assumed T. J. Nevin was an amateur, not a professional, working with a “flashlight and pan” at Port Arthur. S/he assumed too that Nevin recorded the convict’s name as he was being photographed – “they gave Nevin the wrong names when asked ” – and that “those convicts whose photographs remain were all serving long terms”. The unstated inference is that Nevin then wrote the convict’s name on the verso of the prisoner’s cdv, but that is very unlikely in the first instance, since the prisoner’s original identification mugshot was pasted to his criminal record (gaol rap sheet). The numbering on all of these extant cdvs of Tasmanian prisoners photographed in the 1870s was the work of 20th century archivists, whether by John Watt Beattie in the early 1900s at his “Port Arthur Museum” in Hobart, or by curators of exhibitions at the QVMAG in the years 1930s, 1970s, and 1980s … More Prisoner Charles BROWN aka Wm FORSTER: The Bulletin, May 16, 1978