The public amateur and the private professional: a re-evaluation of the categories of public and private in colonial women artists’ work

Notes

• L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850, London: Hutchinson, 1987, chapter 8.
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• J. Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, London: George Allen & Sons, 1911, pp.107–08.
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• For a careful argument supporting the practical existence of ‘separate spheres’ in Victorian artistic culture see J. Wolff, ‘The culture of separate spheres: the role of culture in nineteenth-century public and private life’, Feminine Sentences: Essays on Women and Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp.12–33.
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• Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes… and L. Davidoff, ‘Considering some old husbands’ tales: questions of public and private in modern social history’, Gender, Class and Modern Social History, symposium, History Department, University of Melbourne, 15 October 1993.
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• Anyone researching early colonial women artists in Australia owes an enormous debt to their near-comprehensive documentation in Joan Kerr (ed.), Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pioneering essays by Kerr that identify formerly unrecognised amateur colonial women artists include ‘Colonial ladies’ sketchbooks’, Art and Australia, vol. 17, no.4, 1980, pp.356–62. In addition, a steady stream of monographs on Australian colonial women artists has flowed from other authors since 1979. The limitation of this otherwise impressive body of scholarship is that it remains largely biographical. The need for a critical re-examination of the contexts and meanings of amateurism for colonial women artists has been addressed elsewhere. See C. Jordan, ‘No-man's land?: amateurism and colonial women artists’, Art and Australia, vol. 32, no.3, 1995, pp.358–65. The gendering of the public/private divide has been addressed, in a different context, by D. Malor, ‘Women's points of view: the domestic, the vernacular, the garden and the paddock’, Australian Journal of Art, vol. XIII, 1996, pp.81–89; S. Rowley, ‘The journey's end: women's mobility and confinement’ in J. Hoorn (ed.), Strange Women: Essays in Art and Gender, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994, pp.81–97 and B. McPherson, ‘The verandah as feminine site in the Australian memory’ in Hoorn, Strange Women…, pp.67–80. These essays analyse gendered social space in the colonial home and the Australian landscape.
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• H. Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days: Englishwomen's Private Diaries, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1988, ‘Introduction’, especially pp.4, 12–13.
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• L. A. (Mrs C.) Meredith, My Home in Tasmania, during a Residence of Nine Years, London: John Murray, 2 vols, 1852; Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, (1844), republished Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Colonial Facsimile, 1973.
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• E. Eden, Up the Country, (1866), republished London: Virago, 1983.
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• Frances Eden, ‘The illustrated Indian journal of Frances (Fanny) Eden 1837–38’, India Office Library, London, MSEur.c.130; PHOTO Eur325/1, p.71. J. Dunbar (ed.), Tigers, Durbars and Kings: Fanny Eden's Indian Journals 1837–38, London: John Murray, 1988 confirms the identity of the recipient.
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• Quoted in J. Lawrence and A. Woodiwiss, The Journals of Honoria Lawrence: India Observed 1837–1854, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980, ‘Introduction’, p.16.
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• Mary Morton Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal August 16, 1832—February 13, 1833’, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart, MS unnumbered and ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal Nov. 1852—Sept 1854’, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart, MS unnumbered, typescript of original in library.
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• Information from Geoffrey Stilwell, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart.
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• E. Fay, Original Letters from India, Calcutta: no publisher indicated, 1821, p.iv.
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• Fay, Original Letters from India, p.v.
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• L. A. Twamley, The Annual of British Landscape Scenery: An Autumn Ramble on the Wye, London: W. S. Orr & Co. and Birmingham: Wrightson & Well, 1839.
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• Twamley, The Annual of British Landscape Scenery…, preface.
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• Meredith, My Home in Tasmania…, vol.1, p.x.
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• J. Spencer, The Rise of the Woman Novelist, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp.20–21.
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• K. Shevelow, Women and Print Culture: the Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical, London: Routledge, 1989, p.1.
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• M.A. Stodart, Female Writers: Thoughts on their Proper Sphere and Powers of Usefulness, London: Seeley and Burnside, 1842.
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• ibid, pp.26–27.
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• ibid, pp.135–36.
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• ibid, p.21.
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• ibid, p.105.
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• ibid, p.202.
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• E. MacPherson, My Experiences in Australia being Recollections of a Visit to the Australian Colonies in 1856–7 by a Lady, London: J.F. Hope, 1860. The original sketchbook for the engravings in this book is in the Mitchell Library, Sydney.
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• Mrs C. Mackenzie, Illustrations of the Minion, the Camp, and the Zenana, London: R. Appel, 1854; Honourable Miss [E.] Eden, Portraits of the Princes and Peoples of India, London: J. Dickinson & Son, 1844.
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• F. A. Charsley, The Wildflowers Around Melbourne, London: Day & Son, 1867, preface.
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• F. A. Charsley, letter to Joseph Hooker, 22 August (1866), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Von Mueller Correspondence vol. 82, MS unnumbered, pp.73–74.
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• S. Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families 1600–1900, London: Verso, 1988, p.2.
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• ibid, p.74.
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• ibid.
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• ibid, p.83.
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• ibid, p.93.
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• Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal August 16, 1832—February 13, 1833’ and ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal Nov. 1852—Sept 1854’; Meredith, My Home in Tasmania…; Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales; Louisa Anne Meredith, Over the Straits: A Visit to Victoria, London: Chapman and Hall, 1861; A. Boswell, Annabella Boswell's Journal: An Account of Early Port Macquarie, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1981.
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• Biographical information on Mary Morton Allport from G.T. Stilwell, Mary Morton Allport Commemorative Exhibition 1831–1981, Hobart: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, 1981; Henry Allport, ‘Joseph Allport’, A.G.L. Shaw and C.M.H. Clark (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol.1: 1788–1850, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1966.
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• S. and K. Morris, A Catalogue of Birmingham and West Midland Painters of the Nineteenth Century, Stratford-upon-Avon: S. and K. Morris, 1974.
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• V. Rae-Ellis, Louisa Anne Meredith: A Tiger in Exile, Hobart: St David's Park Publishing, 1990; S. O'Neill, ‘Charles Meredith’ in B. Nairn, G. Serle, R. Ward (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol. 5: 1851–1890, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1974.
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• Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal August 16,1832—February 13, 1833’, unpag-inated.
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• Mary Morton Allport promised to take over one of Minnie's pupils after Minnie's marriage (Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal Nov. 1852—Sept 1854’, unpaginated).
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• Boswell, Annabella Boswell's Journal…, p. 125.
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• ibid, p.132.
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• Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal 1832–1833’, unpaginated; Boswell, Annabella Boswell's Journal…, p.87.
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• N. Nixon (ed.), The Pioneer Bishop in Van Diemen's Land 1843–1863, Hobart: J. Walch & Sons, 1953, p.27.
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• Boswell, Annabella Boswell's Journal…, p.89.
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• Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal 1852–54’, unpaginated.
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• Boswell, Annabella Boswell's Journal…, p.101.
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• Mary Morton Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Scrapbook’, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart, unnumbered, unpaginated.
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• Allport, ‘Mary MortonAllport's Journal, 1852–54’.
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• ibid.
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• Nixon, The Pioneer Bishop…, quote p.12; see pp.7, 38, 42–3 for references to sketches. The ‘key’ to the drawing is held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.
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• Nixon, The Pioneer Bishop…, p.26.
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• ibid, p.40.
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• Allport, ‘Mary Morton Allport's Journal, 1832–33’, unpaginated.
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• Boswell, Annabella Boswell's Journal…, pp.81–82.
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• See J. Kerr and H. Falkus, From Sydney Cove to Duntroon: A Family Album of Early Life in Australia, Richmond, Victoria: Hutchinson/Gollancz, 1982, pp.24–49 for a discussion of these images. A similar sketchbook by Sophia Campbell, 1818–25, is held in the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
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• See J. Hylton, Colonial Sisters: Martha Berkeley and Theresa Walker: South Australia's First Professional Women Artists, Adelaide: Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1994, p.41.
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• F. Parks, Grand Moving Diorama of Hindostan, London: Asiatic Gallery, undated.
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• A. Sattin (ed.), An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, London: Oxford University Press, 1988, p.167.
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• Sattin, An Englishwoman in India…, pp.167–69.
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• Mary Stephen (nee Hindmarsh), Southern Cross Hotel, Adelaide, 1837, Steam Flour Mill on the Onkaparinga River, S. A., The First House (Govt. House) erected in Adelaide, 1837, litho proofs before letters, Mitchell Library, Sydney. See also Stephen's sketchbooks, Wilkinson Family Papers, vol.4, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MS MLA6923.
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• Mary Morton Allport, Rathmore ‘My First Etching’ (an original etching of her house), undated, Fern Valley (a tiny hand-coloured original lithograph of an Aboriginal man), undated, and Opossum Mouse from Grass Tree Hill Tasmania Drawn from Nature and on Stone by M. M. Allport T. Bluett Lithog:, (an original drawing translated onto the stone by a professional lithographer) undated, all in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart.
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• P. Clarke, A Colonial Woman: The Life and Times of Mary Braidwood Mowle 1827–1857, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986, p.262. Examples of Hudspeth's prints are in the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
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• Mary Morton Allport, Comet of March 1843 Seen from Aldridge Lodge V. D. Land, lithograph, undated, from the Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science, vol.11, p.155 and ‘The Great Comet’ as seen at Van Diemen's Land, undated. An engraving after this lithograph appeared in the Illustrated London News, 3 February 1844. These images are held by the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart. See Stilwell, Mary Morton Allport: A Commemorative Exhibition…, p.6.
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