Through a glass darkly

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Through a glass darkly

A star-gazing schoolmaster, a mourning widow, an immigrant farmer, a practical chemist, a defiant bushranger, an unidentified child and a trio of genteel young girls: they all feature in the earliest portrait photographs from the Sydney Living Museum’s collections. Dated from 1855 to 1867, these pictures were created using the daguerreotype and ambrotype processes, two of the earliest photographic formats invented. They are usually preserved under glass, gilt-framed in plush velvet-lined cases. They are fascinating but mysterious. The correct lighting and angle of view are required to clearly see a positive image on the mirror-like surface of the daguerreotype or to see through the reflective layers of the ambrotype. Without provenance it is often impossible to date the image or identify the sitter. Those who cherished the ‘likeness’ had no surface on which to inscribe.

A Mickey Burke mystery Ben Hall 1837-1865 Eleanor Wingate 1813-1898 Emma Rouse 1843-1928 Hannah Terry Rouse 1819-1907

A Mickey Burke mystery

The story of this portrait of an unidentified little girl is connected with the death of Mickey Burke the bushranger. Burke was a member of Ben Hall’s gang and he first came to police notice for his part in the theft of two horses from squatter Thomas Icely’s property Coombing Park near Carcoar, in the central west of New South Wales. He was 20 when he was shot dead three months later, on 24 October 1863, at Dunns Plains, near Rockley, during a police raid on the home of Gold Commissioner Henry McCrummin Keightley. This small ambrotype, just 9 x 5.5 cm in size, is said to have been “in a little red bag, tied around the neck of Burke when he was shot by Keightley”. It found its way into the possession of Thomas Rothery Icely (1832-1918), son of the squatter, and from Icely it went to Mrs Anne Athol Hughes (nee Stewart), a family friend with a particular interest in Australian colonial history.

V88/331

Vaucluse House

Gift of Mrs Anne Athol Hughes (nee Stewart), 1958

Photograph: Jamie North, 2013

Kenneth McKenzie c1835-1922 Lizzie Rouse 1845-1931 Mother and Daughter Mrs Jane Kennerley 1809-1877 Phoebe Rouse 1847-1931 Richard Rouse Terry 1838-1898 Robert Hunt 1830-1892 Roderick McGregor c1842-1919 Siblings Thomas McKenzie c1794-1892