Sepia Saturday 182: William Snowdall Anderson of Ilkeston and Lorne

It's not often that a Sepia Saturday image prompt gives me the opportunity to include a profile of a Victorian Derbyshire photographer, and it seems unlikely that this week's photograph of a horse rider in the Australian bush should do so. Thanks to sharp-spotted fellow photohistorian Marcel Safier, I am able to present a Derbyshire photographer who emigrated to Australia, and spent most of his life in a remote town on the coast of Victoria.


Granby Street, Ilkeston, 1964 (Ref. DCER001377)
Image © NE Midland Photographic Record, courtesy of Picture the Past
William Snowdall Anderson was born in 1867 in Surfleet, a small village in rural south Lincolnshire (coincidentally only a couple of miles from the village of Pinchbeck, a name which featured in an article here last week). He was the third child of a wandering blacksmith; by his early teens the family had lived in at least five different villages. Little is known of his early career as a photographer except that by late 1886, when the 1887 edition of Kelly's trade directory was published, and by which time he was not yet 20 years old, he had opened a photographic studio in Granby Street, Ilkeston, Derbyshire. Adamson shows him operational at this address for at least a year until 1888.


Camperdown Chronicle, Saturday, 20 April 1895, page 2
Image courtesy of Marcel Safier
In November 1889 Anderson emigrated to Australia on the steamship Port Caroline, arriving in Victoria in early 1890, and was married to Bertha Wardle later that year. He worked as a photographer, initially with a studio in South Yarra, later touring Victoria as an itinerant photographer in a mobile caravan.


Mount St. George, Lorne, 1901 (Acc No H96.160/606)
Silver gelatin print (210 x 160mm) by W.S. Anderson, Lorne
Image © and courtesy of State Library of Victoria
In December 1898 he purchased a photographic business from J.S. Norman and J.W. Brown in the township of Lorne on the coast south-west of Melbourne.


Phantom Falls in flood, Lorne, 1902 (Acc No H96.160/682)
Silver gelatin print (157 x 210mm) by W.S. Anderson, Lorne
Image © and courtesy of State Library of Victoria
Lorne was then a fairly remote community, situated at the mouth of the Erskine River on the shores of Louttit Bay, accessible only by sea or by a long dusty road journey through the forested hills of what is now the Great Otway National Park. Anderson was not the only one drawn to it; Rudyard Kipling penned the following after a visit in 1891:

Buy my hot-wood clematis,
Buy a frond of fern,
Gathered where the Erskine leaps
Down the road to Lorne.

The Flowers, 1896

W. Mountjoy's Coach, Erskine River, Lorne, c. late 1890s-early 1900s
Mounted albumen print (165 x 107mm) by William Anderson of Lorne
Image © and courtesy of Museum Victoria
Judging by the number of similar photographs of Mountjoy's coach full of passengers crossing a bridge over the Erskine River, complete with characteristic Eucalyptus-clad backdrop, in the collection of Museum Victoria, these customers must have formed a significant part of Anderson's business. Over time, however, his output varied considerably, picturing both the beauty of the landscape surrounding Lorne and the lifestyle and character of its inhabitants and visitors.


View Larger Map

The same view today is different, naturally, but still recognisable.


Unidentified woman, c.late 1920s-early 1930s (Ref. MM 109704)
Silver gelatin print (89 x 137mm), attrib. William S. Anderson
Image © and courtesy of Museum Victoria
The following is from Museum Victoria:

From 1898 until his death in 1948 Anderson photographed the changing surrounding landscapes and visitors of guest houses in the area. His practice also included panoramic photography, stereoscopic photography, portraiture and experiments with trick photography.

Wagon, team of oxen and dog, 1905 (Acc No H96.160/1042)
Mounted silver gelatin print (205 x 150m), by W.S. Anderson
Image © and courtesy of State Library of Victoria
William S. Anderson died at Ormond, Victoria on 2 July 1948, aged 80, leaving four children and a legacy of five decades' worth of photographs, many of which survive in the State Library of Victoria, Museum Victoria and, no doubt, tucked away in innumerable family archives.

References

Barrie, Sandy (nd) Biographical notes for William Snowdall Anderson, (pers. comm., courtesy of Marcel Safier)

Large format group portrait from A. Seaman & Sons

Anne Simpson sent me this image of another example from A. Seaman & Sons a couple of months ago.


The men in the photo are, from left, Edward Douglas Brown, William Brown, George Brown, Hugh Brown & Samuel Brown. According to Anne, all but Samuel were tailors in Chesterfield. Examination of census records shows that the oldest brothers George and Edward Douglas arrived with their wives in Chesterfield in the mid-1870s, setting up as clothiers/tailors, followed shortly by William, who was apprenticed to George in 1881. The youngest brother Hugh followed in the late 1880s, and by 1891 George had moved to Wingerworth.

Photographers often advertised that they could enlarge photographs "up to life size," but in practice anything larger than a cabinet card (4" x 6" or 107 x 165 mm) is not often seen - at least in my experience. It's nice therefore to receive an image of an example of a larger format. This mount measures 215 x 163 mm (or roughly 8½" x 6½"), while the photographic print itself is 200 x 155 mm.

Men's clothing is always hard to date, as it didn't change with as much frequency as women's fashions did. However, the thick, glossy dark green card used for the mount is typical of that used for both cartes de visite and cabinet cards from the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s. The firm only started advertising itself with the "& Sons" suffix in the late 1880s, so it is safe to assume that it is was not produced before around 1887.


The back of the mount has a label affixed to it, which is to be expected. A studio would be less likely to go to the additional expense of ordering pre-printed mounts of this size if they were not used often. The label states that the firm of "A. Seaman & Sons" had branches in Chesterfield, Matlock Bath, Ilkeston and Alfreton. Although the other three studios were all in existence for lengthy periods, Matlock Bath very rarely gets a mention, at least on the mounts that I have seen. I believe Alfred used to travel there to take portraits on a regular basis at Smedley's Hydro, rather than have a permanent studio there.


However, from the style of the studio furniture and painted backdrop, I suspect that this group portrait was probably taken in the early to mid-1890s, say between 1891 and 1896. Although the elaborately upholstered chairs with tassells and fringes were more commonly used in the late 1870s and 1880s, I know that Seaman continued to use his well into the 1890s because they are a regular feature of other portraits from that decade on my web portfolio of him.