HURLEY, Frank

'Haunt of the Wild Duck' [Northern Territory, Australia, 1914]. A vintage sepia-toned gelatin silver photograph (610 × 438 mm) mounted on the original flush-cut thick cardboard

The mounted photograph has recently been hinge-mounted and matted in archival materials, ready for framing (visible image size 598 × 428 mm, with trifling blemishes to the edges now behind the mat); apart from some minor silvering-out, the photograph is in excellent condition.

The original printed label from the Fine Art Society, New Bond Street, London, is on the verso of the mount, stating, quite inaccurately, that 'This photograph is enlarged from a negative taken during Dr Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition ...'. The title and catalogue number (with the catalogue reference number 133 crossed out and replaced by 124) are manuscript insertions, and match the details in the catalogue prepared for the 1915 Australian exhibition of Hurley's works, which 'emanates from the Fine Art Society ... London'. The full title of the catalogue is 'Exhibition of Unique Photographic Pictures taken during the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Also other Photographic Studies by Frank Hurley' (small octavo, 16 pages plus 8 full-page plates and the title-wrappers; printed in Adelaide by G. Hassell & Son). A small advertisement appeared in the Adelaide 'Advertiser' on Saturday 25 September 1915, announcing a 'South Polar Exhibit.... until October 6. This Exhibition is your only opportunity of viewing Historical Relics of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, and Frank Hurley's Unexcelled Photographic Reproductions'. The photograph in fact comes from the whirlwind 6,000-mile trip he made with fellow-adventurer Francis Birtles through northern Australia from mid-April to the end of July 1914. Provenance: Sir Douglas Mawson (with the Mawson Estate stamp on the verso); by descent.

Item #108645

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