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A taste for art in colonial Queensland: The Queensland Art Gallery Foundational Bequest of Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2018
Abstract
This study arose from an encounter with some paintings (still lives, Madonnas and other religious or genre scenes of mainly seventeenth-century Northern European origin) at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2012. They were intriguing because they were part of a bequest by squatter and colonial parliamentarian Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior (1819–92), which formed the nucleus of the original Queensland Art Gallery collection when it opened in 1895. Little is known about them, but they raise questions: What part did they play in the life of the donor? Did he collect them merely to burnish his reputation? Were they hung in a town house or in the bush? How did they enter the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery and what reception did they receive? What subsequent use has been made of them? This article examines the collection and the role it played in Murray-Prior's life, arguing that it is a coherent collection of Northern European art and more than a status symbol. Furthermore, it has much to say about a period that saw the development of art collecting and exhibiting. As such, it is the perfect foundation for an art gallery in colonial Australia.
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Endnotes
1 ‘Death of Hon. Murray-Prior’, Queenslander, 7 January 1893, 45.
2 For details of Praed's life and legacy, see Roderick, Colin, In mortal bondage: The strange life of Rosa Praed (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1948Google Scholar); Tiffin, Chris, ‘Praed, Rosa Caroline (1851–1935)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National UniversityGoogle Scholar, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/praed-rosa-caroline-8095/text14129, accessed 20 February 2018; Clarke, Patricia, Rosa! Rosa! A life of Rosa Praed, Novelist and spiritualist (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Carter, David, ‘A peacock's plume among a pile of geese feathers’: Rosa Praed in the United States’, Queensland Review 21 (1) (2014): 23–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Chris Saines, ‘Blog. From the Director: QAG revisits founding years on 120th anniversary’, entry posted 29 March 2015, http://blog.qag.qld.gov.au/from-the-director-qag-revisits-founding-years-on-120th-anniversary, accessed 20 February 2018. Note also that the Murray-Prior bequest paintings are mentioned only in passing in the essay written by curator David Burnett about the exhibition ‘The founding years 1895–1915: A collection for Queensland’, held at the gallery from 28 March to 14 June 2015: posted 20 March 2015, http://blog.qagoma.qld.gov.au/the-founding-years-1895-1915-a-collection-for-queensland, accessed 20 February 2018.
4 Accession Numbers 1:0002-1:0005, 1:0007-1:0011. Many thanks to Anne Carter, Conservator, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, for her help, in particular her detailed report on the paintings that made up the Murray-Prior Bequest.
5 ‘Queensland Art Society. Second notice’, Queenslander, 19 August 1893, 354.
6 ‘The Proposed Art Gallery. The legacy of the Late Hon. T. Murray-Prior’, Queenslander, 1 December 1894, 1013.
7 Anne Carter, Conservator at Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, has been unable to find any record of these paintings in the Gallery's archive.
8 Murray-Prior's relationship with his paintings offers a different idea of the man from that suggested by Rachel Henning's description, one often repeated and included in his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography: ‘I suppose it does not require any great talent to be a “Postmaster-General”. I hope not, for such a goose I have seldom seen. He talked incessantly, and all his conversation consisted of pointless stories of which he himself was the hero. The witty sayings that he had said and the clever things he had done’: Henning, Rachel, The letters of Rachel Henning, ed. Adams, David (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1986), 169Google Scholar; see Gibbney, H. J., ‘Murray-Prior, Thomas Lodge (1819–1892)’, Australian Dictionary of BiographyGoogle Scholar, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murray-prior-thomas-lodge-4282/text6927, accessed 20 February 2018. Perhaps the Henning family was not partial to yarning. Certainly, the man described by his daughter was not a buffoon; rather, he comes across as a reflective man with a deep interest in art — albeit one who was very conscious of his social standing.
9 ‘Queensland Social Items. From our special correspondent in Brisbane’, Illustrated Sydney News, 1 August 1891, 10. See also Hannah, Isobel, ‘The Royal descent of the first Postmaster-General of Queensland’, Queensland Geographical Journal 55 (41) (1953): 11Google Scholar; Mennell, Philip, The Dictionary of Australasian Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1892)Google Scholar, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Dictionary_of_Australasian_Biography/Murray-Prior,_Hon._Thomas_Lodge, accessed 20 February 2018; and Gibbney, ‘Murray-Prior, Thomas Lodge (1819–1892)’. He was also taught by Monsieur Giron in Reading and attended the Royal Naval School conducted by Dr Burney in Gosport.
10 Roderick, In mortal bondage, 9–10; on Bromelton, see Savage, Patricia, They came to Bromelton: A brief outline of the life and times of the early pioneers who came to Bromelton – from the pages of history, personal diaries, old letters and family recollections (Brisbane: CopyRight, 2004), esp. 17–26Google Scholar.
11 Tiffin, ‘Praed, Rosa Caroline (1851–1935)’.
12 For the history of Shafston House, see the entry on the Queensland Heritage Register: https://environment.ehp.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=600241, accessed 20 February 2018.
13 For details of Murray-Prior's land dealings in this area, see Collyer, Angela, Rathdowney: Federation History of an Australian Rural Border Community (Rathdowney: Rathdowney Area Development and Historical Association, 2001), 17–21Google Scholar.
14 Clarke, Rosa! Rosa!, 23. The official Queensland Government site, http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/members/former/bio?id=599868483 (accessed 20 February 2018), records the following appointments: Postmaster-General and Representative of Government in Legislative Council, July-August 1866; August 1867–November 1868; 1870–1874; Chairman of Committees, 31 July 1889–31 December 1892.
15 Clarke, Rosa! Rosa!, 23. For a photograph of the house, see ‘Brisbane's Historic Homes. XXX.—Montpelier, Kangaroo Point’, Queenslander, 18 September 1930, 41.
16 See ‘Brisbane's Historic Homes. XXIX.—Whytecliffe, Albion’, Queenslander, 11 September 1930, 41.
17 For a description of the hut, see ‘Strange Life of Rosa Praed’, Central Queensland Herald [Rockhampton], 30 December 1948, 26.
18 Praed, Mrs Campbell, Australian life, black and white: Sketches of Australian life (London: Chapman and Hall, 1885), 31–2Google Scholar.
19 Praed, Mrs Campbell, My Australian Girlhood: Sketches and Impressions of Bush Life (London: Fisher, 1902), 60–1Google Scholar.
20 Praed, My Australian girlhood, 61.
21 Praed, My Australian girlhood, 61; see 61–2.
22 Praed, My Australian life, 38.
23 Praed, My Australian life, 40.
24 Praed, My Australian life, 38.
25 For further discussion of this issue, see Reid, Gordon, A nest of hornets: The massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank Station, Central Queensland, 1857, and related events (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Clarke, Rosa! Rosa!, 15–19; McKay, Belinda, ‘“A lovely land . . . by shadows dark untainted?”: Whiteness and early Queensland women's writing’, in Whitening race: Essays in social and cultural criticism, ed. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004), 150–3Google Scholar; Rutherford, Jennifer, ‘Melancholy secrets; Rosa Praed's encrypted father’, Double Dialogues 8 (Summer 2007–08)Google Scholar, http://www.doubledialogues.com/article/melancholy-secrets-rosa-praeds-encrypted-father, accessed 20 February 2018; Woollacott, Angela, ‘Frontier violence and settler manhood’, History Australia 6 (1) (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 11.8–11; Rutherford, Jennifer, ‘The after silence of the son/g’, The Australian Feminist Law Journal 33 (2010), 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Bloxsome, H. S., ‘The discovery, exploration and early settlement of the Upper Burnett’, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 3 (5) (1945), 344Google Scholar: ‘There used to be an old slab hut at Hawkwood with a shingle roof which was said to be the first house of any sort on the station; there were slots cut in the slab walls through which aperture a rifle could be used for protecting the inhabitants from the wild blacks. When the rifle was withdrawn a piece of iron would drop across the hole on the inside so that spears thrown at the hut could not find a way through these apertures.’
26 Praed, Australian Life, 39–40.
27 For a valuable discussion of the complexities of memory and efforts to reconfigure the past on the part of both Rosa Praed and her father in relation to Hornet Bank and its aftermath, see Ferres, Kay, ‘Sites of history and memory: Hornet Bank 1857’, in Crisp, Jane, Ferres, Kay and Swanson, Gillian (eds), Deciphering culture: Ordinary curiosities and subjective narratives (London: Routledge, 2000), 174–88Google Scholar.
28 Praed, Australian life, 106.
29 Praed, My Australian girlhood, 154.
30 Serle, Jessie, ‘Introduction’, in Lane, Terence and Serle, Jessie (eds), Australians at home: A documentary history of Australian domestic interiors from 1788 to 1914 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990), 22Google Scholar.
31 Murray-Prior also had an excellent library that was important for his children's education; they also produced a monthly magazine, following the example of the Bronte children: Praed, My Australian girlhood, 158–60.
32 Nadel, George Hans, Australia's colonial culture: Ideas, men and institutions in mid-nineteenth century eastern Australia, with a foreword by C. Hartley Grattan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 42Google Scholar.
33 Nadel, Australia's colonial culture, 43.
34 Young, Linda, Middle-class culture in the nineteenth century: America, Australia and Britain (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the distinguished lineage claimed by Murray-Prior, including descent from Edward I, King of England, see Hannah, ‘Royal descent’, 11–17.
35 Murray-Prior's parents, Thomas Murray Prior (1790–1864) and Elizabeth Catherine Skynner (1796–1863), arrived in Sydney on 16 November 1852 on board the Vimeira, departing four days later for Moreton Bay on the steamer Eagle. They spent a couple of years in Brisbane (1852–54), residing in Eagle Street. The father was a popular figure: Nehemiah Bartley described the ‘father, Colonel Prior’ as ‘a genial Irishman, and the inevitable returning-officer and chairman of hospital and similar election meetings in the infant days of Brisbane’: Australian pioneers and reminiscences: Together with portraits of some of the founders of Australia, ed. J. J. Knight (Brisbane: Gordon and Gotch, 1896), 216. See also Freeman's Journal (15 April 1854), 10; ‘Electoral List’, Moreton Bay Courier, 26 August 1854, 4; ‘Moreton Bay’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 October 1854, 5.
36 See T. L. Murray-Prior, ‘T. L. Murray-Prior: Draft memoirs of a voyage from London to Sydney on the Roxburgh Castle, 1838–39’ (transcribed c. 1990), MLMSS 6576, 1-2 [Microfilm CY 4686, Frame 46], Sydney: State Library of New South Wales.
37 ‘Memorandum to the will of Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior dated September 1887’: Colin Roderick Papers, NL MSS 1578, Item 12/44 Folder 6, Canberra: National Library of Australia. Murray-Prior was a caring father, who endeavoured to secure the future of his children, including his daughters (or at least his legitimate children), although it was his second wife, Nora, who built and maintained family relationships, including with her step-daughter, Rosa, and bore the brunt of constant child-bearing and rearing as Kay Ferres has argued: ‘“I must dree my weird”: A colonial correspondence’, Hecate 31(2) (2005): 62–77.
38 Praed, My Australian girlhood, 2–3. Praed writes that her grandparents arrived on board the Roxburgh Castle, but it was her father who sailed on this ship; the name must be a mistaken recollection.
39 Praed also mentions ‘Father Time’ hanging in the dining-room of a dwelling at Cleveland, ‘Creallagh’, which consisted of four huts joined together: My Australian girlhood, 112, 115.
40 An undated inventory of Murray-Prior's art collection lists twenty-seven pictures, including three family portraits and the Murray-Prior coat of arms, along with ‘Sundry smaller pieces and studies’: Mitchell Library MLMSS 3117/Box 9, Inventory of Paintings, n.d., p.149/325.
41 His eldest son, Thomas de Montmorency Murray-Prior (1848–1902), and his daughters Rosa Praed and Elizabeth Jardine (1854–1940).
42 29838, Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior Last Will and Testament, Brisbane: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
43 Hogan, Janet, ‘Queensland Art Gallery: An historical perspective’, in Queensland Art Gallery: Retrospect and prospect, ed. Horton, Mervyn (Sydney: The Fine Arts Press, 1983), 477Google Scholar; McKay, Judith, ‘Rediscovering the artist Godfrey Rivers and his legacy to Queensland’, Queensland History Journal 22 (4) (2014): 291–2Google Scholar. On Rivers, see Hogan, Janet, ‘Rivers, Richard Godfrey (1858–1925)’, Australian Dictionary of BiographyGoogle Scholar, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rivers-richard-godfrey-8217/text14379, accessed 20 February 2018; and McKay, ‘Rediscovering the artist Godfrey Rivers’, 287–301.
44 ‘Queensland Art Society. Second Notice’, Queenslander, 19 August 1893, 354.
45 ‘Queensland Art Society. Second Notice’, 354.
46 ‘Queensland Art Society. Second Notice’, 355.
47 ‘Epitome’, Queenslander (24 November 1894), 1003.
48 ‘Proposed Art Gallery’, 1013.
49 He suggests that the ‘Teniers is probably one of the many paintings by the younger Teniers, painted at inns in payment for his lodgings. It is evidently on the panel of an old sideboard, and is a good piece of work.’ Rivers’ opinion of the ‘Ages of Man’ has already been cited. ‘The Miraculous Draft of Fishes’ is also wrongly attributed by Rivers [it ‘is no doubt by Bartolomeo Breenberg (seventeenth century). He was a painter of good renown’] and no special judgement is made about the ‘Holy Family’ apart from it being ‘a picture of the Italian school of the end of the sixteenth century’. He finishes his appraisal of the individual pictures by stating that ‘the marine painting I cannot give any information about. It has not much artistic value’: ‘Proposed Art Gallery’, 1013.
50 Maynard, Margaret, ‘Queensland's National Gallery: The opening collection, 1895’ in Horton, Mervyn (ed.), Queensland Art Gallery: Retrospect and prospect, (Sydney: The Fine Arts Press, 1983), 488–9Google Scholar; see 488–91.
51 Weedon, Thornhill, Queensland past and present: An epitome of its resources and development. 1897 (2nd ed.) (Brisbane: Government Printer, 1898), 141–2Google Scholar; Maynard, ‘Queensland's National Gallery’, 488–91.
52 Margaret Maynard describes the pictures as ‘second-rate Old Masters’, ‘minor sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian and Netherlandish works, some without attribution’: ‘Queensland's National Gallery’, 488.
53 ‘Queensland Art Gallery. The opening day. A review of the collection. A hopeful beginning’, Queenslander, 6 April 1895, 642.
54 ‘Queensland Art Gallery. The opening day’, 642.
55 For a discussion of this practice in contemporary book design and illustration, see Heckenberg, Kerry, ‘Exactitude and pleasure: Late nineteenth-century Australian pictorial atlases and their illustrations’, Script & Print 36 (4) (2012), 222–5Google Scholar.
56 ‘Queensland Art Gallery. The opening day’, 642.
57 For details, see Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, ‘Blog: An historical perspective: Queensland Art Gallery’: http://blog.qag.qld.gov.au/an-historical-perspective-queensland-art-gallery, accessed 20 February 2018.
58 See Mount, Harry, ‘Introduction’, in Sir Joshua Reynolds, A journey to Flanders and Holland, ed. Mount, Harry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1797]), lxviGoogle Scholar.
59 Mount, ‘Introduction’, lxvii–lxviii.
60 Mount, ‘Introduction’, lxviii.
61 Silver, Larry, Peasant scenes and landscapes: The rise of pictorial genres in the Antwerp art market (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Silver, Peasant scenes and landscapes, 208–25.
63 See Silver, Peasant scenes and landscapes, esp. 3, 7–8.
64 He drew on sixteenth-century modes such as world landscapes and scenes of hell, painted in a delicate style, while also introducing new variations in subject matter and developing the ‘wilderness landscape’: Silver, Peasant scenes and landscapes, 208.
65 Silver, Peasant scenes and landscapes, 222–5.
66 See Freedberg, David, ‘The origins and rise of the Flemish Madonnas in flower garlands: Decoration and devotion’, Muenchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 32 (1982): 116Google Scholar; see also Merriam, Susan, Seventeenth-century Flemish garland paintings: Still life, vision, and the devotional image (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012)Google Scholar.
67 Freedberg, ‘The origins and rise of the Flemish Madonnas’, 116.
68 Victor I. Stoichita, trans. Glasheen, Anne-Marie, The self-aware image: An insight into early modern meta-painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4Google Scholar.
69 Such as Allegory of Sight by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, dating from 1617 (Madrid, Prado). Stoichita argues that the garland paintings allowed the introduction of religious images into secular surrounds (see 67–88), but this has been contested by Susan Merriam, who points out ‘that devotional images were in actual and represented collections long before the creation of the first garland painting’: Merriam, Seventeenth-century Flemish garland paintings, 99. Nevertheless, I would agree with Stoichita that the format of the garland pictures would help to facilitate the inclusion of religious images in private collections.
70 See Mitchell Library MLMSS 3117/Box 9, Inventory of Paintings, n.d. p.149/325: nos 9 and 10.
71 It is noteworthy that Francken was a central figure in the development of paintings depicting art and curiosity collections: Stoichita, Self-aware image, 85–6, 117–20; Merriam, Seventeenth-century Flemish garland paintings, 95.
72 Stoichita, Self-aware image, 4.
73 Merriam, Seventeenth-century Flemish garland paintings, 2.
74 For the frequent use of such motifs, see Stoichita, Self-aware image, 79.
75 Stoichita, Self-aware image, 7. Here Stoichita is referring to a different painting, but the point is relevant to these images as well.
76 Stoichita, Self-aware image, ‘Part one: The surprised eye’, 1–63, esp. 15.
77 Madonna and Child Encircled by Roses, dated to c. 1650s, and attributed to Jan van Kessel the Elder (Flanders, 1626–79) and the Circle of Simon de Vos (Flanders, 1603–76).
78 See Bellori, Giovanni Pietro, Giovan Pietro Bellori: The lives of the modern painters, sculptors and architects: A new translation and critical edition, ed. Wohl, Hellmut and Montanari, Tomaso, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 157–75Google Scholar.
79 See Cat. 7.6 and Cat. 7.7 in Judith W. Mann and Babette Bohn, with Plazzotta, Carol, Federico Barocci: Renaissance master of color and line (New Haven, CT: Saint Louis Art Museum, Yale University Press, 2012), 154Google Scholar, 155; on the National Gallery picture, see Cat. 7 and 145–57.