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sketcher and amateur photographer, naval officer and politician, was born in India, son of Arthur Pooley Onslow of the East India Company and Rosa Roberta, née Macleay. He came to Sydney in 1838 to stay with his grandfather Alexander Macleay (father of Fanny Macleay ), rejoining his family in England in 1841. In 1847 he entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman in the Howe , was promoted lieutenant in 1852 and commander in 1863. Having served in HMS Herald on the survey of north-eastern Australia in 1857-61, he returned to England and served in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. Arthur Onslow came back to Sydney on sick leave in 1864. He married Elizabeth , only child of James and Emily Macarthur , on 31 January 1867 and retired from the navy with the rank of post captain in 1871. A pair of fine photographs in the Camden Park Albums showing Arthur and Elizabeth Onslow before their marriage were taken by William Hetzer . He and Elizabeth and their growing family lived at the Macarthur property, Camden Park, and the family name ultimately became Macarthur-Onslow.

Photographs taken by Onslow during the Herald voyage were included in the Camden Park albums (Mitchell Library), re-attributed to him by Newton after long being given to his wife’s bachelor uncle, Sir William Macarthur , who also lived at Camden Park and who collected the photographs. In particular, Newton attributes all the Western Australian photographs to Onslow, including good close-up portraits of Aborigines at King George Sound, e.g. Native Woman King George’s Sound 1858 , Native Women Albany King George’s Sound 1858. On 7 February 1858, he noted in his Journal (Mitchell Library):

There are a great many natives about at this time of the year most of them are out in the bush catching kanga. On Wednesday I went ashore with Milson and we commenced photographing. In fact I had great trouble in getting them to sit as they were afraid that it’d cause their death. But on seeing me take of the [M’Hails?] and by [crossing?] them they pluck’d up courage enough to let bring the lens to focus on them but they are bad sitters. I have not yet been very successful but tomorrow I will try again. [Excerpt as transcribed in a Tim McCormick 1990s sale catalogue which was offering two other prints of the WA native women, also with a Macarthur family provenance.]

They were probably the first photographs taken at King George Sound and the first to be taken in Western Australia outside Perth. (These works have previously been attributed to Matthew Fortescue Moresby who was thought to have taken them when aboard the Iris in 1858)

As well as being an enthusiastic photographer – one of the Sydney circle of gentlemen amateurs whose ranks included Moresby and Joseph and Ernest Docker – Onslow was a competent if conventional landscape sketcher. A few attributed examples survive among work by his wife and children in family sketchbooks and albums. His contribution to photography is of much greater importance yet was long forgotten, as all the photographs in the Macarthur Albums were previously attributed to their collector, William Macarthur. During his lifetime Onslow was best known for his public life as a politician, holding the seat of Camden from 1869 until he retired in 1881. Any late connection with photography was slighter. A devout Anglican, it was Onslow in his role of trustee who denounced Henry Barnes for selling obscene photographs at the Australian Museum in 1874. He died of paralysis in January 1882, survived by his wife, six sons and one of their two daughters.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989