Design and Art Australia Online

professional photographer, son of Hugh McDonald and Grace née McDougal, was born in Nova Scotia where his father was a planter. He came to Melbourne in about 1847 and was in partnership with Townsend Duryea by 1852. Their daguerreotype portraits and views in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition were awarded a medal (which McDonald was still citing in advertisements in 1866). At the end of 1854 Duryea and McDonald were in Tasmania announcing that they would open a daguerreotype studio on 11 December at 46 Liverpool Street, Hobart Town. Still enough of a novelty to require promotion and explanation, their daguerreotypes were labelled 'Curiosities as works of art – puzzles to the uninitiated – studies for the contemplative – pleasing reflections – historical records – pocket editions of the works of nature which “he who runs may read”’. The partners had gone their separate ways by the following July when 'Macdonald & Co., late Duryea & Macdonald’ began to advertise from Brisbane Street, Launceston. Archibald visited Launceston in July and again in November, in the interim making short tours to Deloraine (August), Longford (September) and Campbell Town (October).

Afterwards he continued the Melbourne firm of Duryea & McDonald possibly with Sanford Duryea , Townsend having relocated to Adelaide. By 1855 Thomas Adams Hill was the other half of the partnership at 3 Bourke Street, East Melbourne, but Hill soon left the studio to set up on his own. The young Charles Nettleton had joined the firm in 1854 and, according to Cato, then took over the outdoor work while McDonald concentrated on studio portraiture. The business flourished and by 1858 Duryea & McDonald had two Melbourne studios. McDonald set up a studio in his sole name in 1860 at 25 Bourke Street. In 1861 a case of his daguerreotype portraits in the Victorian Exhibition was awarded a first-class certificate and his photograph of the Albion Hotel received an honourable mention in the supplementary awards. Both his untouched and 'Mezzotinto’ portrait photographs gained honourable mentions at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.

Having moved to St George’s Hall at 71 Bourke Street by 1864 McDonald was advertising extensive additions, including a new gallery, in 1866. His studio, he predictably claimed, was now 'second to none in Europe or America and far surpassing anything in the Colonies’. The fire of March 1872 that destroyed the Theatre Royal, located directly behind his studio, also damaged his premises, but they were soon repaired and McDonald was at this address when he died the following year. His death was reported in the Illustrated Australian News on 4 December 1873: 'On the 8th November, Mr. McDonald the well-known photographer of Bourke Street, met with a fatal accident… He was in the act of dressing himself when he by some means fell upon a basin which broke and inflicted a deep wound in his thigh about six inches long, severing one of the arteries… He died on the following day from an already impaired constitution and loss of blood.’ He was buried in the Church of England section of the new Melbourne Cemetery on 11 November.

Archibald McDonald and Clara Stanley née McManus, who had married at Melbourne in about 1857, had six children. After his death his widow continued the business, being joined by Archibald’s brother Alexander, who had been working as half the firm of Baxter & McDonald ( see Robert Baxter). The studio continued at the same address until about 1875, then Alexander McDonald ('of Duryea and McDonald, Melbourne’) worked in the New England district of New South Wales on his own, being at Uralla, Tamworth and Armidale in 1875-76. Alexander spent the rest of his working life at various locations in New South Wales, moving down from Tamworth to Newcastle in 1889. He was at Windsor in 1896-97.

Archibald McDonald’s photographs are well represented in the Victorian copyright collection (La Trobe), including 69 carte-de-visite portraits of Roman Catholic prelates and priests probably taken at the second Provincial Council in Melbourne in April 1869. He also took views and Aboriginal groups. Alfred Abbott 's album contains several of McDonald’s view photographs, all taken in 1870, including one of an Aboriginal camp. Portraits of local celebrities were naturally part of the business; another copyrighted carte-de-visite is of J.G. Harris, 'Champion Pedestrian of Australia’ (1870, LT). The Mitchell Library has a McDonald carte-de-visite photograph of a circus dwarf c.1870.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011