Historical Documents of the The Royal South Australian Society of Arts 1856–1872 compiled & edited by Adam Dutkiewicz The Royal South Australian Society of Arts Inc Historical Documents of the The Royal South Australian Society of Arts 1856–1872 compiled & edited by Adam Dutkiewicz The Royal South Australian Society of Arts Inc First published in 2020 by the Royal South Australian Society of Arts, Inc. Level 1, Institute Building cnr North Terrace & Kintore Avenue Adelaide SA Australia 5000 PO Box 177 Rundle Mall Adelaide 5000 ABN: 18 504 345 871 website: www.rsasarts.com.au Contact: [email protected] RSASA Gallery opening times during exhibitions: Mon–Fri 10.30am–3.30pm, Sat 1–3.30pm. Images: © the artists and their assignees, 2020 or Public Domain Texts: sourced from the Society’s archives and through Trove - all are Public Domain, except for some of the artists’ profiles © Adam Dutkiewicz, 2020. All rights reserved. Always behave ethically with respect to creative material. Please treat both texts and images with respect: credit when using academically and publishing on social media; for commercial uses seek permission from the 1. George French ANGAS, The Lower Falls of Glen Stuart Society. on the Morialta Rivulet in the Hills near Adelaide c.1846 Adelaide, lithograph, 35.4 x 25.3 cm from South Australia Illustrated [London: Thomas McLean, 1846] NB The text has been edited according to our house style State Library of South Australia, B 15276 / 23 (Public Domain) modelled on a contemporary Australian Style Manual, especially with respect to punctuation and titles (italicised), “The lower fall is represented in the annexed plate, where the to save room, and to make the text more user-friendly. swollen stream dashes over a precipice of some seventy feet, The subject of each article is highlighted in bold inside descending into a deep pool, from whence if again flows along on the text, if not immediately apparent, so the documents its downward mission to the plains. The borders of this stream are can be scanned for relevant content. The original headings in many places choked with the fresh-water tea-tree; the native lilac, and a dwarf species of mimosa are frequent along its banks; are often the same or similar and not of much use with a variety of Xantharaea [sic], styled ‘black-boy’ by the settlers, respect to content, so alternate headings indicating sources overruns the rocky sides of these hills, usually abounding in the and subjects are inserted in italics. Editorial additions are most stony and inaccessible places.” included within square brackets. A painting of this subject by Victorian painter Thomas Clark won Acknowledgments second prize in the Second Annual Exhibition of 1858 (cat. # 147); The Art Gallery of South Australia Library scanned the see p. 8. SASA / RSASA catalogues and placed them on their database, and shared them with the Society to add to their Front cover: Walter Scott-Barry: 1893 Exhibition, the South own material and digital archives acquired from history Australian Society of Arts’ rooms — No. 1 and other private sources over the years. The project was 1893 Adelaide, albumen print on paper mounted on card initiated under Jin Whittington during her time at the 26.9 x 36.7 cm (sheet) head of the AGSA Research Library, and is continuing RSASA Archives and reciprocated by this and the earlier History Project (2016–17). Thanks to all contributors, especially Dr Diana Frontispiece: Chairman’s gavel Kostyrko; Stephanie Schrapel; Bev Bills, David Baker; Susan State Library of South Australia, SRG 20/14 Woodburn; Design & Art Australia Online (DAAO); Royal Photographs by Adam Dutkiewicz The plaque on the gavel reads: Collection, The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace; Art “Royal S.A. Society of Arts Inc., Founded 1856” Gallery of South Australia; National Gallery of Australia; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; State Library of South Australia; National Library of Australia; Ipswich Art Gallery; and Sotheby’s, Elder Fine Art, and other suppliers of images. CONTENTS 1 1856 Newspaper Reports of Foundation & First Meeting 6 2 Profiles of Founders: Charles Hill 8 3 WWR Whitridge 11 4 1857 Inaugural address; Review of First Exhibition (including Judges’ Report) 12 5 1858 Newspaper Report of Meeting of Members (including Judges’ Report) 16 Newspaper Report of Opening & Lecture 17 6 1859 Review of Third Exhibition 24 Judges’ Report & Newspaper Editorial re Allocation of Prize; Lecture 25 7 1860 Fourth Annual Meeting & Prize ructions 30 8 1861 Founding of School of Design, Deferment of Fourth Annual Exhibition 34 9 1862– 63 Editorial; Abstract of AGM Proceedings; Seventh Annual Report 39, 45 10 1864 Review of Eighth Annual Exhibition; Annual General Meeting; Lecture series 47, 52, 58 11 Profile of Alexander Schramm 55 12 Profile of James Doveton Stone 61 13 1865 Lectures (cont.); Ninth Annual General Meeting; Inaugural address 63, 65, 69 14 1866 Tenth Annual/Special General Meeting 70 15 1867 Eleventh Annual Report; Distribution of Prizes & Art Union 71 16 Profile of George B Shaw 77 17 Profile of George A Appleton 78 18 1868 Twelfth Annual Meeting 80 19 1869 Thirteenth Annual Exhibition; Annual Meeting 82 20 1870 Fourteenth Annual Exhibition; Review; Letter to Editor 88 21 Profile of John Hood 92 22 Profile of James Hesketh Biggs 93 23 1871– 72 Fifteenth Annual Exhibition; Editorial; First & Second Notices; Prizes 95 24 Profile of Ida Amelia Darling; Letter to Editor from Charles Hill 104 in the position to which we are entitled by our training; we may be fit for better things than we can afford to purchase. 1856 But though we could not support a great historical painter, or collect an exhibition of pictures and sculptures equal to NEWSPAPER REPORTS our desires, it cannot be maintained that something more may not be done here than has hitherto been attempted to cultivate a taste for art where it already exists among our THE FINE ARTS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA people, and to diffuse it where as yet no signs of its presence are found. If we are in a position to profit by opportunities, The circumstances of early colonizers are anything but it is surely desirable that opportunities should be furnished favourable to the cultivation of art. There are too many to us. subjects of less inherent importance, but far more pressing We have recently heard of the existence of a Society in their immediate claims, calling our attention to permit the — perhaps it would be more strictly correct to call it the devotion of time to the finer arts. Painting, poesy, and song embryo of a Society — having for its object the cultivation have to stand aside while the more material claims of daily of the fine arts, using the term in its limited application to life are engrossing all energies. But though their demands painting, engraving, and sculpture. The Society is, we are are postponed, the arts are not abandoned; for it would be given to understand, in working existence in Adelaide, has impossible for those who had been born to a participation in honorary members and working members, a Committee the luxuries of civilization and educated in the refinements of Management and a Master, pupils studying the arts of of taste wholly to lose the relish which such culture gives. drawing and engraving, and the requisite casts and copies for It will be found accordingly that when the first struggles of their use. As it is intended to apply to the South Australian colonization are over, and the first necessities of humanity Institute, when the machinery of that body comes into provided for, the claims of taste and genius begin to be operation, for permission to affiliate, or perhaps incorporate recognised. It were idle to assert that this colony has as yet the Fine Arts Society with the Institute, no harm can be done emancipated itself completely from the thraldom of its early by alluding thus openly to tho facts of the case. The Society circumstances, although twenty years have passed over it. numbers, as we are informed, upwards of forty members, Twenty years are but a brief period in the history of a people, including at least three members of the Legislature of the and but for the influences we bring with us from the parent province. The pupils, seventeen in number, meet frequently land, centuries would not find us in advance of our present at stated times for practice. They pay a small subscription, position. We are not a people devoted to art; it can scarcely but the honorary members have not hitherto been called be said that the arts flourish among us; but we have cultivated upon for any money contributions. The drawings and casts tastes and some amount of critical perception in our midst, from which the pupils copy are the property of the master, and can enjoy what we are unable to produce. Mozart might Mr Charles Hill. These he proposes to place at the disposal have starved among us, and Raffaele must have worked as a of the Governors of the Institute, when the anticipated house-painter to earn his bread. But it must not be forgotten incorporation is effected, to form the nucleus of a collection that even in England Milton toiled in obscurity as a school of works of art. It is intended, when the Society shall have master, and in our own times Haydon destroyed himself in assumed a more prominent position in connection with the despair. Institute, to give public lectures, on art subjects, at regular intervals not exceeding two months from lecture to lecture; Thus much may be safely affirmed of our art culture— and also annually to collect and exhibit as many paintings, that we are in a position to profit by opportunities.