4007 - Australia

Australia Photographer: John William Lindt (1845-1926) and others. Images of John William Lindt's home and photographic studio, the Hermitage, Narbethong, Victoria, Australia. 1880s-1890s. 31 albumen prints and 17 gelatin silver prints, some mounted to studio board, 3 albumen stereo views and 5 albumen cabinet cards. Most circa 15 x 20 cm and reverse, 18 x 20 cm, a few smaller, 2 panoramic views (12,5 x 32 cm). Some with title, number and photographer's name in the negative in lower edge; most annotated in pencil/ink on the verso. John William Lindt was a German-born Australian landscape and ethnographic photographer, an early photojournalist and portraitist. After he had run away to sea at the age of seventeen, he deserted his vessel at Brisbane, and settled in Grafton, New South Wales by 1863. He worked for the photographer Conrad Wagner, whose studio he acquired in 1868 and established his own business. In 1876 he moved to Melbourne, where he opened a Collins Street studio and quickly gained recognition for his society and theatrical portraits, cityscapes and landscapes. From ca. 1873, Lindt photographed Aboriginal people of the Clarence River region, outdoors and in the studio, using the demanding wet-collodion process. The latter compositions depict sitters in elaborate reconstructions of natural settings, surrounded by selected garments and implements, revealing the procedures by which the studio shaped its ethnographic imagery. In 1894, Lindt built The Hermitage at Blacks Spur, near Narbethong. It served as a residence, studio and guesthouse, where he moved a year later and lived there until his death in 1926. Lindt traveled extensively in Australia and abroad, but he was particularly familiar with the mountainous forests between Healesville and Marysville. The present group offers a more private view of Lindt’s life, showing him with his family in the gardens and lush surroundings of The Hermitage, including a rare 1869 interior of his Grafton studio. – Some surface scuff marks; some prints with creases and tears along the edges; a few with slight fading at the edges; gelatin silver prints with silver mirroring, otherwise most in very good condition with strong contrast. Provenance: By descent to the current owner.