An impressive lithographed portrait of Edward John Eyre (1815-1901), explorer and administrator
[No Place, No Publisher, No Date] (but circa 1860s).
A lithograph on tinted paper (artificial plate mark size 305 × 233 mm; paper size 430 × 318 mm), mounted on slightly larger thick card; the caption 'Edward John Eyre' is printed in the margin below the image.
Minimal foxing to the margins; slight marks around the edges of the paper (a legacy of prior framing, easily matted out); a superb portrait in excellent condition.
'Edward John Eyre (1815-1901), explorer and administrator, emigrated to New South Wales from England when he was seventeen. Settling in Adelaide after pioneering expeditions with sheep and cattle, he made several attempts to find an overland stock route from the city to the west. In January 1840 he learned that a committee was organising an expedition to find a way west. Eyre persuaded them to refocus the expedition on the north, agreeing to pay for half of this bid to 'discover the inland of Australia'. Many gruelling months into the trip, one of his party was murdered, and the rest disappeared. Eyre and his Aboriginal colleague, Wylie, staggered into Albany more than a year after they had set out. In 1844, after having served as Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, Eyre ['served as lieutenant governor of New Zealand, 1846-53, and governor of St Vincent, 1854-60. Appointed governor of Jamaica in 1864, he was recalled in 1866 after his suppression of an Afro-Jamaican uprising with over 400 executions' (History Trust of South Australia)].... Returning to England, he found the intelligentsia divided on his actions; court proceedings were three times brought against him, but dismissed. In the early 1870s, the government paid all his legal costs and awarded him a governor's pension; he lived in seclusion near Tavistock, Devon, for the rest of his life' (National Portrait Gallery of Australia). The NPGA has a similar portrait (a less-accomplished engraving), captioned 'Edward John Eyre. Late Governor of Jamaica. Engraved by J. Brown from a Carte de Visite by H. Hering. London, Richard Bentley, 1867'. The State Library of South Australia has a contemporary photograph of the lithograph; the online version of the 'Australian Dictionary of Biography' reproduces it in its entry on Eyre. An example of the carte de visite by Henry Hering (157 Regent Street, London) on which all these versions are based is available online in The Caribbean Photo Archive (reference 4892686740), where it is catalogued as 'Published by Marion & Co, London, UK, circa 1860'. This lithograph appears to be rare, if searches in the usual places are any indication.
Item #133136
Price (AUD):
$1,500.00