Docker family, pictorial material, October 1984 / compiled by Peter Docker

PXE 1534

fonds

October 1984

Graphic Materials, Photographs

902488

1 box (103 photographs) - 16 x 21 cm - black & white

Joseph Docker is thought to have taken the earliest surviving calotypes in Australia. With his photographer son, they took many images of the Australian landscape and did much to support the emerging photographic industry in early Australia.

Born in 1802 in London he excelled as a painter, amateur photographer, carver, surgeon, pastoralist and politician, and migrated in 1834 to New South Wales. There he received a grant of 10,000 acres on the Dartbrook, near Scone in the Hunter Valley, which he named Thornthwaite.

Probably in the 1840s, Docker painted two oils, Ford on the Lower Hunter and View on the Lower Hunter . He also painted watercolours and composed songs. Joseph Docker received a highly commended certificate at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition for his watercolour of Waterfall at Penang, Straits of Malacca , painted, Joseph stated in the catalogue, 'on common brown parcel paper’. Also shown were two watercolours of Australian Scenery (presumably on ordinary paper) and Falls of Taplia near Rio [de] Janeiro (also on brown paper).

Joseph Docker’s greatest interest, however, was photography. Both he and his son Ernest (from the age of eight) experimented with calotype and ambrotype (collodion positive) photography and Joseph is thought to have taken the earliest surviving calotypes in Australia

The family lived mainly in Sydney after Joseph Docker became a Member of Parliament (MLC 1851 to 1884), but they travelled frequently. He and Ernest produced a series of views of well-known scenic areas in most of Australia, New Zealand and Norfolk Island.

(Source: http://www.daao.org.au/bio/joseph-docker/biography/?. June 6, 2013)

Portraits and copies of originals displayed at the Docker sesquicentenary reunion in October 1984.

Images are of the current Docker family and photographs of family portraits from the early 1800s and landscape paintings by Joseph Docker.

Contents list filed with collection. List indicates ownership and location of Joseph Docker paintings amongst family members.

Copyright status:: In copyright - created after 1955
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and the Docker family

Pic.Acc. Upgrade Project - Information transferred from Pic.Acc.6665 as part of the eRecords Project 2012-13

List on file

Good condition