View from the top of Government House looking towards Campbell's Wharf on the west side of Circular Quay, Sydney, 1858.

Beschreibung

Large format albumen print, 190 x 270 mm, in a specially prepared mount with a translucent backing sheet and cedar frame designed for viewing in a Polyrama Panoptique (see below); the cedar frame bears an early inscription in ink: 'Campbell's Wharf'; the print is a little faded and has scattered foxing and a few small sections of surface loss caused by insect damage, but otherwise has miraculously survived intact in spite of its vulnerable format; the frame is in original condition. This view of Campbell's Wharf is one of the eleven sections that comprised William Blackwood's celebrated photographic panorama of Sydney Harbour, taken from the top of Sydney's Government House in mid 1858. The present example was published in: Masterpieces of Australian Photography. Paddington, NSW :Josef Lebovic Gallery, 1989, #2 (illustrated p. 9) A simple albumen print of this very early Sydney view would be considered rare in its own right; what makes the present example of even greater interest, however, is the fact that it was specially prepared at the time for viewing in a domestic optical device, most likely a Polyrama Panoptique. This device had been invented in France by Pierre Henri Armand Leford in 1849 and was marketed throughout the 1850s. It resembled a miniature panorama: the viewer looked through a lens at a thin paper transparency inside (in this case, the albumen print on very thin paper with its translucent backing sheet); by means of a shutter, the viewer could then illuminate the scene from the front or the rear using different light sources, producing a variety of visual effects. We find advertisements for the Polyrama in Adelaide newspapers as early as 1853; while in Sydney, a selection of 'Superior Polyramas' was advertised as being on sale at Crouch's Bazaar in George Street over the Christmas-New Year period in 1856. (Note: a similar device, called the Megalethoscope, was invented in Italy by Carlo Ponti around 1862. However, not only is this significantly later than Blackwood's panorama, but there is also no mention of the Megalethoscope in Australian newspapers until the following decade - 1876, in fact). From the DAAO: 'Portrait painter and professional photographer, was christened Olaf William Blackwood, although he became known as William in Australia. His father?s name was Robert and Olaf William was said to be 'a portrait painter of Swedish-Scots descent? when he married Sarah, daughter of Obediah West and granddaughter of Thomas West (who had one of the original land grants at Darling Point, Sydney), in St Mark?s Church of England, Darling Point, in 1854. They had nine children. By 1858 Blackwood had set himself up as a professional photographer in Sydney, his studio being at 16 William Street, Woolloomooloo. In mid-1858 he took 11 imperial size, wet-plate photographs from the top of Government House which combined to form a large-scale Panorama of Sydney Harbour, the first produced in the colony. Blackwood advertised it in the Sydney Morning Herald on 6 July. In October it was on sale at Edwin Dalton's Royal Photographic Company in various sizes and formats costing from 2s 6d upwards. One version is included in one of Blackwood?s three surviving albums (Mitchell Library). The Herald was ecstatic about the panorama: 'the largest photographs we have yet seen taken in this city? They were considered?not merely faultless, but super-excellent ? We understand that Mr. Blackwood has fitted up an apparatus with which he can travel to any part of the town or country, and fix his views on the glass upon the spot the instant they have been taken. It is his intention to continue the series of views of the streets and public buildings of Sydney, copies of which can be multiplied to almost any extent. His landscape pieces are achievements of the photographic art, and at once stamp Mr. Blackwood as an artist of considerable merit.? Blackwood published another album in 1858 consisting of photographs of Sydney?s nine banks. At.

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Titel

View from the top of Government House looking towards Campbell's Wharf on the west side of Circular Quay, Sydney, 1858.